I don't know if it was Juan Luis Cebrián, its first director, or Jesús de Polanco, the main shareholder of EL PAÍS, who set a line from the beginning, but what is clear is that whoever did it had a very modern idea of the written press, because the appearance of EL PAÍS, in the middle of the Transition, was one of the best that Spain had to offer in the new regime. Everything was new, including the layout and format, but the most important thing was the veracity of the information, the fact that the things reported in the texts corresponded to a truth that readers could verify through their conflicts with the ever-changing reality. That was the great revolution that EL PAÍS introduced in the world of news, at a time when Spaniards (and Latin Americans who were still living under dictatorship) were eager for a free press: a clear difference between the things the newspaper defended, its opinions, and the things that the newspaper reported or announced, verifiable simply by paying attention to what was happening or going to happen. After so many years of propaganda, the Spanish were not accustomed to this division between the truth of facts and opinion. The revolution that the newspaper represented had this unique character: the real events, on the one hand, and, on the other, what the newspaper defended or attacked.
This small revolution introduced by the new newspaper forced its peers to opt for a division so similar that, between the events that occurred and the opinion of the newspaper, there were sometimes enormous distances. Not all of them achieved that differentiation, but the existence of EL PAÍS forced them to try.
Readers became accustomed to reading the news, whose verisimilitude was flagrant, and the comments that they aroused, favorable or adverse, regarding the occurrences that were transmitted. You have to place yourself in the context of the time to understand the change. I remember, with my small background as a newspaper reader, what this meant. As a newspaper reader, my experience was limited. Until then, in the Spanish-language press it was very difficult to differentiate what was happening from what the newspaper reported, because it was often mixed with the newspaper's positions. Telling the naked truth was the great success of EL PAÍS, regardless of the opinions it offered on this event.
My column in EL PAÍS was hired in 1990 by someone who had recently taken over as editor, Joaquín Estefanía, and from the beginning I decided that it should be called Touchstone. A few days or weeks later, when giving his opinion on a matter in which the newspaper maintained a different line, Jesús de Polanco defended my position against the newspaper's line, arguing that the newspaper's columnists had the right to defend their opinions, whether these were adverse or sympathetic to those of the newspaper itself.
I am convinced that the truth of the editors, even if they are wrong, should also be published, as long as the editors do not detect verifiable errors, because they are the ones who are closest to the news and the street. Columnists have a different function, with more freedom than someone who fulfills an informative function, but that does not mean that they have less responsibility when it comes to transmitting the truth as they understand it. Once they are convinced they have found it, the columnists must be willing to defend it even against the will of the newspaper, if necessary. I have been very lucky, the expressions that have accompanied me have always been mine, whether they coincided or disagreed with the political line of the newspaper, which means that, when I have made a mistake, I have done so without being previously “corrected”, because THE COUNTRY has respected my point of view.
That would be the only advice I convey to young people who are starting out as writers in the daily press: tell and defend their truth, whether it coincides or disagrees with what the newspaper defends editorially. I think that the example of EL PAÍS has spread and that now, although there are exceptions, that is a more or less general policy, or at least the attempt. Just as the Spanish Transition served many countries on the other side of the Atlantic that were inspired by it when they left their dictatorships behind and democratized in the 1980s, EL PAÍS was also a reference for the newspapers that regained their freedom or were founded in the new democratic stage.
Sometimes, it is difficult to tell the truth as we understand it from our particular position, and there is a risk of making mistakes because the truth can be elusive, complex, diverse (Isaiah Berlin spoke, in another context, of “contradictory truths”). But in this case, the confession of error is as valuable as having been correct in defending one's own. Apart from the risk of being wrong, columnists face another problem. It is often difficult to always have the humor of the written page and many times the columns do not turn out well because they suffer from sufficiency or from those infractions that poorly instructed journalists incur. It is preferable, in that case, to recognize the uncertainty rather than defend a truth in a deformed or hidden way, because when faced with a credible fact it will always be feasible to give an opinion with reluctance, with doubts, rather than making a gross mistake.
As long as a newspaper recognizes that some facts differ from the truths it promotes, its credibility is maintained. When there is a discrepancy between their truth and certain facts, the habits of the newspapers are different, because some, always of quality, prefer to refrain from telling their truth and publish the facts. Or recognize the mistake of having put forward a wrong version. As long as this is done honestly, it's fine. The serious thing is to bog down the truth or obscure it to avoid giving weapons to the competitor or contradicting one's own convictions.
I have never stopped telling my truth, in which there is a margin of error, sometimes large, and which can evolve, even drastically. When I have published compilations of articles, such as Against all odds, where you can follow my trajectory from socialism to liberalism in texts from many years ago, I wanted my readers to witness my own moral and political learning through these contradictory and discrepant articles. here in me Touchstone, I have given my opinion on all the things that favored or harmed me, always in good faith, whether I agreed or disagreed with the newspaper's line. In many things I have been consistent over the decades and in others I have varied my way of thinking. And perhaps that is the merit of the columns that last so many years: to make transparent the debate that a columnist has with himself over time when he strives to bring his ideas closer to reality, which is always changing depending on the context. .
My advice, I said before, to young journalists, is to always tell the truth, even if it is difficult to assimilate and describe, based on reality. Although this is often difficult, there are always ways to approach it, and I believe that if the journalist renounces his obligation to tell the truth, that is the source from which all the evils of the press derive, from the small effort to the tidal wave that lying can cause. The talented journalist seeks the truth like a sword that cuts its way everywhere. Telling lies, manipulating, is easy, but sooner or later it becomes evident. He who tells the truth and defends it provides a service to his readers and to his time. That is what I have timidly aspired to with the name —Touchstone— from my column in EL PAÍS.
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