Martin Baron, former editor of The Washington Post, warned during a recent visit to Spain that journalism has rarely been under so much pressure in recent history. Is the situation so serious for prison freedom? And is that the biggest challenge facing the media today, or is it the rise of disinformation, the fatigue of many readers or the press's financing models?
Four of the country's main media outlets gathered this Saturday in Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona, at the first debate table of the elDiario.es Festival of Ideas and Culture, to try to respond to the accumulation of challenges threatening journalism. Ignacio Escolar, director of the newspaper organizing the event; Esther Vera, from Ara; Jordi Juan, from La Vanguardia, and Soledad Gallego Díaz, former director of El País, have come up with a number of recipes: greater transparency, strengthening the community of readers, more public services, less dependence on economic powers and social network algorithms and, finally , , a new – albeit delicate – regulation of the sector.
“There is more political, legal and social media pressure due to disinformation mechanisms to fight press freedom,” Escolar said about the question from moderator Neus Tomàs, deputy director of elDiario.es, in response to the baron's words. . “But it's not so much about pressuring the media to put out false information,” Escolar continued, “but rather about discrediting their true information,” as Trump is doing in the United States or his “ small' imitators around the world.
Given this initial diagnosis, Vera and Juan rejected the idea that the pressure from political and economic powers is worse today. “I am not one for apocalyptic scenarios, but things could get much worse before they get better,” said the director of Ara. “Pressure? ‘Welcome,’ responded the director of La Vanguardia provocatively, ‘a sign that what you publish does not go unnoticed and that we are still alive.’ The question, then, is how to deal with this pressure so that the newspapers do not suffer from it.
At this point, most speakers agree on the need for financial autonomy with the contribution of readers, a model with which elDiario.es has managed to reach 87,000 members this week. “Either the reader pays for it, or those who have other interests pay for it,” Vera summarized.
How to regulate hoaxes
Everyone also agrees that one of the new challenges of journalism is dealing with disinformation, and in particular websites that pose as media outlets and even receive public funding to spread deception. “The line must be truthfulness. The Constitution protects the right of citizens to receive information and not lies,” defended Gallego Díaz, who has called for more violence against those who knowingly publish false information that affects the lives of others.
At that time, the debate revolved around the question of how to regulate the spread of disinformation, an issue considered in the European law Media Freedom Act and recently raised by President Pedro Sánchez when he spoke of stopping ‘pseudomedia’. “”. “I agree with that, but who draws the line and decides what is a pseudomedia? The government?”, said Juan, who has shown his reservations – shared by the majority – that political power sets rules that ultimately harm journalism.
Escolar, for his part, has argued that it is possible to establish certain “objective criteria” that define a media outlet in relation to these portals. For example, by hiring journalists. “It seems obvious, but in this way we would eliminate 80% of pseudomedia,” he assured. And it has added other possible requirements, such as transparency in ownership.
All managers agree that a new regulation should also include a requirement for greater transparency in the area of subsidies and public contributions to the media. “All the money that comes from a government must be known where it goes,” says Juan. Vera, for her part, has denounced the difference that exists between the Generalitat, one of the few governments that makes its institutional advertising public in the media, and the Community of Madrid.
At this point, Juan and Escolar also warned that there is a formula for financing the media with public money, which is even more complicated to trace. This is done through private companies. “A municipal government has a roundabout or a library built and the document says that the company has to allocate so much money to advertise it,” he gave as an example, and that is where the administration pushes them to give money to certain media . .
The Essence of Trading vs. the Algorithm
Finally, those in charge of these four newspapers have insisted on sticking to the essence of the profession, namely research, control of power and public service. “The information must be for the readers and not for the algorithm,” says Escolar, who has assured that chasing the public on social networks, at the expense of sensational headlines and superficial content, has no future.
Faced with the possibility of personalizing the information that the reader receives, Gallego Díaz also wanted to end by appealing to the need to read news that may not interest the first reader. “The president of Google said something that made my hair stand on end: that they were going to make sure that the reader only gets the information that interests him. Then he will only get that of his city, his football team and his children's jobs. 'Aren't we going to inform you about Sudan?' He left the question hanging in the air.
Dozens of readers of elDiario.es and other curious people and passers-by have gathered in Plaça de Catalunya and challenged the idea that information is less and less interesting. And they changed the newspaper's motto: Journalism despite everythingto the weather next Saturday in Barcelona: Journalism despite the rain.