{"id":52697,"date":"2023-08-13T07:03:44","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T05:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=52697"},"modified":"2023-08-15T07:08:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T05:08:07","slug":"vox-ivan-the-terrible-and-francisco-marhuenda-the-inconsistencies-of-a-fictional-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/08\/13\/vox-ivan-the-terrible-and-francisco-marhuenda-the-inconsistencies-of-a-fictional-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Vox, 'Ivan the Terrible' and Francisco Marhuenda: the inconsistencies of a fictional novel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Being a journalist and writing novels are two very respectable trades. What can be criticized is that a journalist confuses one and the other.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/08\/08\/ivan-espinosa-the-elegant-farewell-of-a-great-politician-a-good-person-and-a-friend\/\">Iv\u00e1n Espinosa, the elegant farewell of a great politician, a good person and a friend<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/08\/09\/vox-and-the-curious-things-that-some-media-are-trying-to-sneak-in-as-information\/\">Vox and the curious things that some media are trying to sneak in as 'information'<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>This week we received the sad news of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/08\/08\/ivan-espinosa-the-elegant-farewell-of-a-great-politician-a-good-person-and-a-friend\/\">abandonment of the policy of Iv\u00e1n Espinosa de los Monteros<\/a>, deputy and spokesman for the Vox parliamentary group in Congress. <strong>In Spain there is a clich\u00e9 that dying helps to finally get people to speak well of you<\/strong>, and my dear Iv\u00e1n can feel relieved that he did not have to be inside a coffin to be able to see how some who praise him they slandered him.<\/p>\n<p>One of those affected by this sudden change has been <strong>Francisco Marhuenda, director of La Raz\u00f3n, one of the media closest to the Popular Party<\/strong>, who has been pampering this medium especially (remember that another PP-affiliated media, Abc, revealed in 2017 that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.es\/espana\/abci-razon-copo-60-por-ciento-inversion-publicitaria-metro-madrid-entre-2011-2015-201706070306_noticia.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">La Raz\u00f3n <em>\"copied 60% of Metro de Madrid's advertising investment between 2011-2015\"<\/em><\/a>, a controlled company by the Community of Madrid, in the hands of the PP since 1995). <strong>The day Iv\u00e1n announced his resignation<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pacomarhuenda\/status\/1688861141731004417\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marhuenda said about him that he was <em>\"the representative of the most liberal wing\"<\/em> of Vox.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Iv\u00e1n is an admirable liberal-conservative for those of us who share that ideological affiliation. <strong>Another thing is what Marhuenda understands by \"liberal\"<\/strong> in this fictional story that he and his newspaper have written about Vox. Let's see an example. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.larazon.es\/espana\/espinosa-de-los-monteros-ha-tomad-el-control-absoluto-de-vox-IO24084048\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\" _blank\">On July 7, 2019, La Raz\u00f3n published a fictional story on Iv\u00e1n Espinosa<\/a> <strong>stating that <em>\"he has taken absolute control of Vox\"<\/em><\/strong>. The news was based on anonymous sources and was full of false data, a true classic in that type of current literature that some sell us as \"journalism.\"<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ivanedlm\/status\/1147871873843286017\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Iv\u00e1n himself dismantled the falsehoods of that news in a Twitter thread<\/a> published that same day. Despite this, <strong>La Raz\u00f3n did not rectify any of the falsehoods published<\/strong> and maintains them today on its website despite having already been denied, which reflects the particular sense of professional ethics that they have in that newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>Even today, <strong>in that same piece of news, it is still stated that Iv\u00e1n acts \"like a chieftain\"<\/strong> and that he and his wife, Roc\u00edo Monasterio (an excellent person, as is his husband), are <strong> the \"guillotine couple\"<\/strong>. Perhaps Marhuenda confuses liberalism with the Jacobin Terror, the first totalitarian regime of the Contemporary Age... La Raz\u00f3n added: <em>\"<strong>because of the whip of Espinosa de los Monteros, everyone agrees in calling him \u00abIv\u00e1n the terrible\".<\/strong> A powerful boss who, like the czar of all the Russias, leaves no head puppet to whoever stands in front of him.\"<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This crude caricature, appealing to anonymous sources, <strong>accused Iv\u00e1n of <em>\"generating an extreme-right anti-system party<\/strong>, a kind of Podemos in the antipodes\"<\/em>, and insisted on resort to the Russian simile to end up <strong>qualifying him as <em>\"the authentic czar of Vox\"<\/em><\/strong>. And now, four years after that cataract of lies, Marhuenda tells us that Iv\u00e1n was from the \"more liberal wing\" of Vox, all without Iv\u00e1n having taken a sudden ideological turn: he continues to defend the same thing he did then.<\/p>\n<p>This is <strong>an example of how certain media outlets have dedicated themselves to lying about Vox to create a false image about that party<\/strong>, resorting to hoaxes like those included in that embarrassing news item from 2019. Now it is worth asking: <strong>How many other false stories about Vox has La Raz\u00f3n published in all these years?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of course, I would have no objection -beyond harsh literary criticism- if Marhuenda had written <strong>a novel in which Iv\u00e1n Espinosa was Sauron's successor in charge of the destinies of Mordor<\/strong>, to in the end, make him the hero of the story and crown him as Aragorn's successor in the Kingdom of Gondor, without the protagonist changing his speech at any time. <strong>Marhuenda and La Raz\u00f3n are very free to write incoherent works of fiction. The problem is calling that \"journalism\"<\/strong> and trying to convince their readers that this novel, this invented story, are real events.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly, Vox will have to do its part to improve its relationship with the media, but <strong>companies like La Raz\u00f3n and journalists like Marhuenda should also reflect and criticize themselves<\/strong>, because what they have done against Vox could be labeled novelism, political activism, propaganda, or disinformation, but to call it \"journalism\" is an insult to good journalists.<\/p>\n<p>---<\/p>\n<p><small>Photo: Efe. Francisco Marhuenda, director of the newspaper La Raz\u00f3n.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being a journalist and writing novels are two very respectable trades. What can be criticized is that a journalist confuses one and the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10720],"tags":[1692,12461,1485,7535],"class_list":["post-52697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","tag-francisco-marhuenda","tag-ivan-espinosa-de-los-monteros","tag-la-razon","tag-vox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}