Beware the messenger: the media that calls anonymous rumors 'news'

@ElentirENG ES 4·03·2024 · 7:01 0

There was a building in which two neighbors lived who got along well, Pepe and Manolo. And there was also a neighbor who had few scruples.

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That neighbor with few scruples used to act as a messenger of rumors. On one occasion he was talking to Pepe at the entrance of the building and asked him about Manolo: "He is a great guy and cooks very well", Pepe told him. The next day, the messenger saw Manolo in the hallways of the building and said to him with a malicious gesture: yesterday Pepe told me about your curious gastronomic habits. Manolo knew this neighbor well and did not stop to talk to him, because he did not trust him, but that comment (the messenger did not say more) made him uncomfortable. Manolo left without saying a word.

The next morning, the messenger saw Pepe again and told him: "it seems that Manolo is uncomfortable with you". Pepe was surprised, because he was not aware of having done anything that could bother his neighbor. "How is that? What have I done to him?", Pepe asked the messenger. "Well I don't know, he didn't want to tell me anything but when I told him about you and he seemed angry." Pepe went to work and was worried all morning.

This fictional story could end in two very different ways: with Pepe and Manolo stopping greeting each other and fueling a stupid feud because of another unscrupulous neighbor, or with Pepe asking Manolo about his neighbor's comment and the whole truth coming to light.

Situations like this occur in many places and can be the origin of many bad relations between neighbors. But beyond the scope of a neighborhood, what happens when that messenger is a journalist?

In fact, in our history we have seen the messenger sending comments from identified people. In journalism there is a custom even worse than that of that messenger: spreading anonymous statements, often with the aim of causing harm.

Personally, that seems like a lack of professional ethics to me. Furthermore, this practice opens the door for any journalist to simply invent the anonymous statements they publish. Who guarantees me that a journalist who does something like that has actually spoken with the anonymous person from whom he has obtained that supposed statement? With whom could a statement that is not known from whom could be verified?

Those types of statements should be very limited in journalism. It is understandable that this is done when the person in question lives under a dictatorship or in any other situation in which his identification when publishing those words could pose serious personal danger. But turning this into the usual practice of some media outlets turns journalism into mere rumormongering, a practice that is closer to that of those unscrupulous people who speak ill of their neighbors behind their backs, spreading rumors to hurt them. Faced with these types of things, readers should be more critical and not forget that a journalist can lie and manipulate, in the same way that many politicians and anyone else do.

Journalism is a very necessary profession in any country, since it fulfills - or should fulfill - a role in monitoring political power, a role that makes a society freer. Unfortunately, some journalists are degrading their profession with their bad practices, contributing to journalism losing its prestige, abusing its credibility for purposes that are too often not clean at all.

Degrading journalism also degrades our democracy, as it deprives it of a much-needed asset to denounce abuses of power. So, I ask you, once again, to be critical of what you read and to not accept as news what are actually anonymous rumors, rumors that, furthermore, may simply be invented.

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Photo: Hans Neleman.