2023-12-03 06:09:42
In a week, we Argentines will have a new president. A change that seems to be heading towards still uncertain directions, in which – as seen until today – improvisation seems to prevail, or at least the absence of absolute definitions on the main issues that dominate the political, economic and social discussion.
In this framework, the role that we journalists and the media have is the same one that we have always fulfilled: maintaining an analytical look at what is happening and rejecting the idea that this job can be compatible with mere contemplation or – worse – complicity with power.
Since the electoral almanac was opened this year, certain journalists and certain media outlets have embarked on a clear task of mimicking the former candidates and now elected government. Identification that Mr. Javier Milei takes full advantage of to transmit, through means similar to his ideas and plans, every step he takes. It is no coincidence that he chooses those media and journalists for his communication (in addition to social networks, which he keeps well oiled through specialists on the subject, skilled in installing true or false news, as appropriate). The president-elect speaks less and less with journalism in general and more and more with his non-appointed but acting spokespersons.
It is convenient that the readers of this newspaper, whose defense I intend to exercise, are clear regarding what the messages are and who spreads them. There is no innocent attitude on the part of like-minded journalists, just as there is none in the handful of professionals in this profession who walk on the opposite path and do not put a stop to definitions loaded with thick words.
Some readers have commented on the positions of journalists of this newspaper, including its main editorialist. However, they accept that the media, institutionally, and its members can express their opinions openly and express their support or rejection of one or another political leaders. It is one thing to confess your preferences openly so that readers feel that they are respected and quite another to become amplifiers of news directed in one direction or another.
In a conference held in 1996 by the Mobilizing Institute of Cooperative Funds, the remembered journalist José María Pasquini Durán (died in 2010), said: “The relationship between journalism and power, in my opinion, is as complex as an incestuous relationship. , because it is a relationship full of contradictions, blame, associations, alliances, complicities, etc., which have space – above all – at the level of what I call the ‘power of the power factors’, including the government in power. and proprietary journalism, that is, editorial journalism that we should not confuse with the journalist’s journalism. There is then a tangle of economic interests that sustains that relationship, beyond what the circumstances or the situation indicate.”
Another of the speakers at that meeting, Enrique Vázquez, pointed out: “The media are the only ones that can generate currents of public opinion, while before – seventy or eighty years ago – that was a power of political and religious leaders, or of teachers and educators. Currently, this is an exclusive attribute of the media, since they are the only ones that can thematize a society. Therefore, we must underline something already said: the media is not always successful in inducing people how to think, but they are always successful in telling people what to think regarding. At that time, today’s influential social networks did not exist.
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#Journalists #spokespersons #presidentelect
