The false alternative journalism that whitewashes dictatorships where such journalism is illegal

@ElentirENG ES 3·05·2024 · 7:01 0

I am very critical of the manipulation that occurs in many media outlets and the direction that journalism is taking.

Serving the interests of the enemies of the West is also a betrayal against Spain
Russia's support for separatism in Spain and the support of Spanish separatists for Russia

The need to separate journalism from political power

I believe that the best journalism is that which is exercised without any type of ties with political power. One of the biggest problems of current journalism, for example in Spain, is precisely its growing dependence on public aid, in the form of subsidies and institutional advertising. This dependence and the ideological bias of many media outlets contribute to a growing discredit of journalism.

The loss of credibility of journalism among a growing part of the population is giving way to a phenomenon that we could call alternative journalism, which has had a special boom in recent years thanks to the Internet. To a large extent, social networks are changing journalism a lot, bringing us closer to the sources of information and allowing us a faster comparison of the news we receive. There are also digital media without any dependence on subsidies, which strive to offer quality information.

The false alternative journalism that whitewashes dictatorships

Unfortunately, bad practices in traditional journalism are being used by some as an excuse to sell us false alternative journalism. And I say "false" because the alternative to traditional journalism cannot be propaganda at the service of dictatorships in which journalism is tightly subjected to power.

I am referring to dictatorships such as Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, communist China, North Korea and others, dictatorships in which true alternative journalism is punished with prison, torture and even death. . As bad as journalism may be in the West, any media in a democratic country has much more freedom than the media of those dictatorships, some of which only allow media owned by the State and controlled by their governments.

It is not alternative journalism nor is it journalism: it is propaganda

For some time now, I have been seeing alleged alternative journalists who are dedicated to whitewashing dictatorships like Iran or Russia, sometimes making trips to those countries to tell us how good life is there and try to convince us that If we have a negative opinion about them it is because we are manipulated.

In the end, those so-called alternative journalists are dedicated to repeating the lies that these dictatorships issue, that is, they do the worst thing that someone who considers themselves a journalist can do: repeat the slogans of political power completely. uncritical. That is not alternative journalism nor is it even journalism: it is pure propaganda.

The absurd credulity of some in the face of this propaganda that whitens dictatorships

The worst thing is that there are many unsuspecting people who swallow this propaganda without further ado. In fact, a paradox often occurs: people who distrust - healthily - what the media in democratic countries say, or who even - in a way that borders on paranoia - think that everything they say those media is a lie (even if they are verified and duly proven facts), at the same time we simply believe what the official media of dictatorships say, dictatorships that lie systematically to cover up all the abuses they commit.

It is already something sadly common to find people on social networks saying that all Western media lie and then they simply believe everything they read in official Russian media such as RT or Sputnik News, in the official media Iranian HispanTV and other media owned by dictatorships, official media whose sole objective is to misinform. It is necessary to be critical of what you read in the media of democratic countries, and with even more reason to be distrustful of what the media of a dictatorship publishes. To simply believe what the official media of dictatorships say is not to be critical nor is it to seek alternative information: it is to act like an idiot who allows himself to be manipulated by criminals.

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Photo: Kremlin.