How did we fall into the temptation of fame, entertainment, trivialization and easy applause to abandon good practice like an old-fashioned broken toy? When do we substitute rigor for vertigo, verification for rumor, impartiality for etiquette and, what is worse, general interest for personal or group interest?
Not long ago, reality took shape within public opinion when it appeared written – “black on white” – in the local newspaper or other conventional media. In any conversation or controversy, well-informed people guaranteed the veracity of their statements because they came from that trusted source that was journalism, through the press, radio stations or television. “I read it in the newspaper,” they said. “It was on the news.” “They said it on the radio.” They were frequent sentences from interlocutors, convinced of being in possession of the truth.
As in so many other things, we have also changed in this and, unfortunately, for the worse. Certainties and trust in the media have disappeared to be replaced by uncertainty and distrust, in the best of cases.
Although, the most dangerous and even alarming thing is that the group of those who live in algorithmic bubbles is increasing, fed by toxic falsehoods and packaged in emotional packages that lead to radicalism, fanaticism and violence, which is not always only verbal.
This demonic process – to which those of us who unknowingly forward poisoned messages innocently contribute – is a spiral that is usually tinged with hate and almost never motivated by love. It carries within it the seed of destruction and denialism with the consequent harmful consequences for the population (remember the pandemic, wars, DANA, etc.).
At the historical moment when journalism is more necessary than ever, it seems destined to disappear, leaving citizens orphaned by the intermediation that guarantees their right to truthful information; one of the founding requirements of any democracy. This is what the Constitution says, which was drafted at a time when the Internet, social networks, or the know-it-all terminal that we always carry in our hands did not exist. And much less did Artificial Intelligence exist.
It has been almost a quarter of a century since the digital space took over the planet and our authorities are only beginning to realize today that the rules of the game that guaranteed us fundamental rights – such as freedoms of expression and information – have been erased by complete. Through facts, non-compliance with elementary regulations has become a common currency of the digital space and compliance can only be demanded through judicial claims. The alarm bells are ringing in the chancelleries because the absence of good journalism has been taken advantage of so that whoever has the power of the information space can clearly influence the elections. Americans – and consequently the rest of the world – now have more reasons to fear with the almighty Elon Musk in the engine room.
Only now is our Government concerned with updating the rules and obsolete legislation. Thanks to the attention that the European Parliament has paid to the risks of this new reality, we now have a community reference that shows us the steps to follow. Research and studies to this effect intensified in community instances, especially starting in 2020 due to the global alarm unleashed by the pandemic and the terrifying impact of the digital infodemic on the population. But it was not until March of this year 2024 that the European Law on Freedom of the Media was approved, which is mandatory for member states from August 2025.
In recent meetings of the Council of Ministers, Spain has made progress in transposing said legislation into our regulations, as it could not be otherwise. But unfortunately this reform comes under the shadow of suspicion since it develops a part of the Democratic Action Plan, announced last September by the President of the Government – after the five days of silence that he allowed himself to take in the face of the offensive of the opposition against his wife. But it was a pending issue.
Waves are coming in the political and media landscape because the debate has already been born tinged with that perverse fog of mistrust that, without a doubt, will be fodder for misinformation. The risks of confusing the right to information with that of freedom of expression to justify various excesses; that quackery can be camouflaged as journalism to treat both equally; of being tricked and the manipulations of power justified with restrictive norms, just as many other temptations force us to prepare and update our criteria. To do this, it is urgent to know rigorously the rights that we have as citizens, but also the responsibilities to which these require us.
The law that develops the constitutional precept of the right to the Conscience Clause of journalists (1997) considers the professional reporter a “social agent of information, who exercises his work under the unavoidable principle of responsibility.” So there is no longer any doubt about the relevant mission and subsequent commitment that corresponds to those who carry out this work.
But this norm also enshrines the differentiated consideration of the companies that own the media, which it warns that they cannot be moved solely by mere economic interests, given that they also have a democratic responsibility of another kind. In this sense, the law stipulates that communication companies are “entities that, beyond their legal nature – public or private companies – participate in the exercise of a constitutional right that is a necessary condition for the existence of a democratic regime.” . Therefore, journalists and media companies are – we are – legally responsible for guaranteeing a fundamental right.
Journalism – as provided for in the Magna Carta – seems to have disappeared, drowned by the digital tsunami. There are only a few hardworking professionals left who have become an endangered species. We only find rare vestiges of what the job should be, but so little significant that they are irrelevant in the media magma.
This pillar of the right to information has been swallowed up by the digital logosphere. The entire adjacent communicative ecosystem is on the verge of extinction due to intrinsic and extrinsic causes. That is, because of us and because of the action of other elements that, until now, have not been stopped.
How could this happen to us? many people ask me. How did we fall into the temptation of fame, entertainment, trivialization and easy applause to abandon good practice like an old-fashioned broken toy? When do we substitute rigor for vertigo, verification for rumor, impartiality for etiquette and, what is worse, general interest for personal or group interest?
Why did the media renounce the prestige of their mastheads and their proximity to the audience that their readers enjoyed with pride of belonging? What happened so that these publishing and audiovisual companies forgot that they are obliged by law to be “active agents” of democracy to, on the contrary, pursue mere clikbait and the purely economic interests that their boards of directors imposed on them, with the subsequent impoverishment of journalistic work, stealing the dignity of professionals to treat them as troops of mercenary slaves?
Well, it happened to us that, almost in one fell swoop, the world turned upside down and transformed the known spaces in such a way that nothing is what it was. “It’s the digital environment, stupid,” we could say, paraphrasing the classic motto of North American politics coined in Bill Clinton’s election campaign.
We barely realized it when smart screens entered our homes and a back-and-forth power came into our hands, while various jobs and trades disappeared or were transformed and others emerged that were unknown and unintelligible to many. It was thus, little by little, with the dismissal of veterans and the accumulation of capital gains on newcomers, that we were colonized by the digital world. We were subjected to a parallel reality in which there are no rules other than those imposed by the new aristocrats of the digital space, who act with enormous and unfathomable power. It is time for the laws that govern, obligate and protect us to also be applicable in that ubiquitous digital world in which we already live and from which we cannot ignore. They are welcome, as long as they result in recovering power, influence and respect for journalism, that endangered species that should be the quality seal of every democracy.
#Journalists #happen
