A helicopter crashes into the credibility of Spanish journalism
Yesterday, while the media close to Sánchez's government were fueling a witch hunt against Iker Jiménez, something curious happened.
The Efe agency, controlled by the Sánchez government and which has a website to combat hoaxes (but which never says anything about the hoaxes issued by the government on which it depends), launched a fake news story claiming that a helicopter had crashed into the Torre de Cristal in Madrid, the tallest building in Spain.
First, the agency deleted the tweet warning of the alleged accident, and amid a wave of criticism finally published a brief apology note, stating that it had been a "mistake": "The accident referred to in the text did not occur." It should be noted that the headquarters of the Efe agency are one kilometer from the building in question. In other words, the agency did not even visually check the building in question before publishing this hoax.
The funniest thing is that La Vanguardia was one of the media outlets that echoed the hoax. Here you can see an automatic copy of their news item spreading it. The news outlet stated the following, without citing Efe as a source and simply listing "Agencies" as the origin of the information: "A helicopter crashed early Thursday afternoon into Madrid's Torre de Cristal, the tallest skyscraper in the Spanish capital. It is unknown if there are any victims due to the impact."
Let us remember that yesterday La Vanguardia announced that it was leaving Twitter because of its "toxic content". In the news published to announce it, the director of that newspaper, Jordi Juan, lamented that «conspiracy theories» or the spread of hoaxes or fake news are allowed, which “have found in X their perfect sounding board to amplify them”». Reading this plea in defense of censorship now, after the helicopter hoax, is hilarious.
Another media outlet that reproduced this hoax was the newspaper La Razón, owned by Grupo Planeta, which is the majority shareholder of Atresmedia, the media group that includes channels such as Antena 3 and La Sexta. A few days ago, this newspaper attacked Iker Jiménez, accusing him of spreading "hoaxes". That same day, this newspaper published a story teaching its readers how to identify a hoax, information especially aimed at parents. The news said this:
"One of the most important skills for identifying hoaxes is knowing how to verify sources. Help your child understand that not all websites, social networks or applications are equal in terms of reliability."
Of course not. For example, this is a blog and it would not have occurred to me to publish a news item about such an accident without having any evidence, evidence that is easy to obtain today thanks to Twitter, since anyone can publish a photo of the events without being a journalist. La Razón reported on this accident without having any evidence. You decide which of the two sources seems more reliable to you.
In short, what happened yesterday is that a fictitious helicopter crashed into the credibility of Spanish journalism, leaving one of its most important sources, the Efe agency (whose information is reproduced by many media without any kind of verification), in the mud. Now they will try to convince us that the problem is social networks and specifically Twitter, but the reality is that Twitter has become the fastest and most effective tool to verify news and expose hoaxes.
Perhaps that is what some media fear: on Twitter, information is not unidirectional, but the audience also has a voice. This is the big problem for traditional journalism, which is used to dictating what people have to say and what should be news, and even what topics can and cannot be debated.
Finally, I encourage you to reflect on a question: if Efe is able to get many media outlets to report a fake helicopter accident, because many media outlets simply copy and paste what they receive from that agency, what will happen with many other pieces of information whose verification is more complicated? How many times, invoking their prestige and credibility, do they slip us things that are not true or show us as untouchable dogmas things that are very questionable in important public debates on issues such as abortion, gender ideology, environmentalism, security or immigration?
---
Image generated by artificial intelligence with Grok.
|
Don't miss the news and content that interest you. Receive the free daily newsletter in your email: Click here to subscribe |
- Most read
- Trump shut down a pro-abortion website in the first hours of his second term
- The history of the military salute of Portugal and Brazil when taking the oath to their Flag
- The two pitiful messages the left is sending with its abandonment of Twitter
- Banja Luka, NATO's first air combat and the retaliation against a Spanish aircraft
- The powerful armored and artillery force that Lithuania is building up in front of Russia
- The story of a B-17F bomber whose tail fell into the void with a gunner inside in WWII
- Hamas held hostages in compounds belonging to the United Nations
Opina sobre esta entrada: