A lot of PRISA
*The original of this cartoon was sold in 2016.
The early mornings are usually quiet, but today there was something in the air, the "embargoes" of front pages seemed to hide strategic feints. At 12:30, Pedro J., a friend of embargoes, talked about a photo of Hugo Chávez intubated that someone wanted to sell.
However, the director of El País had already brought forward the "exclusive" in English and Spanish at 22:23.
At around 4 a.m., El País, in its digital edition, released the "morcilla"(full-page screenshot). A photo of Hugo Chávez intubated, from the Gtres Online agency, which was nothing more than a funny capture of a YouTube video from 2008 (see minute 2:33)
Immediately, the EFE agency makes a carambola mess up, soon deletes what was written and tells something else, keeping the same url.
The photo was on the front of El País for almost half an hour until it decided to leave, it is not known if it dissolved due to a pixelation attack
With the printed edition ready and the blood sausage smelling of ink, at 5:45 in the morning, far from any apology or explanation, El País publishes that El País removes a fake photo from El País. Without further ado.(Update 9:10, they add a paragraph in which they apologise).
You know that nasty habit that fake photos have of sneaking into newspaper buildings and lodging themselves on the front pages, taking advantage of the silence of the night and the deep sleep of the newsroom.
Thirty minutes is a long time for the internet, where two minutes are enough to rule and rule. And so it has been, media all over the world are divided between those who ring the blood sausage and those who announce the shrimp.
Later they would publish another text entitled"La foto que El País nunca debió publicar"(The photo that El País should never have published) in which they shake off the fleas by saying that the agency that provided it was tricked and that the newspaper published it with a warning that they had not been able to verify it. A double dose of sloppiness.
But beyond the errors of eager novices of the new click press, the editorial agony of anguish is also evident. El País was looking for the tube, the colorao, the gut. It was looking for the death rattle to bathe itself in pus and splash around splashing in its success.
Related, another more complete summary. This is how to ask for forgiveness in a newspaper.