Whitewashing fascism

 

Whitewashing fascism

Whitewashing fascism

Fascism according to some (too many) media. Cartoon of 03/04/2021 in CTXT

I think that if you were to ask a hundred people at random for a reasoned definition of "information" you could get almost a hundred very similar definitions with their corresponding and natural differences. If we synthesise a lot we would surely find certain coincidences. An event, an occurrence, a story, truth and/or reality, context... could well be some of the concepts that could appear in substance or in form.

I am one of those who think that journalism today is in its worst moments, or at least is in a process of upward degradation and with no short-term improvement in sight. The constant jockeying for attention in the cheap click market of social networks has added a further point to the porkerisation of the profession.

If news has always been out of date in the blink of an eye, you know that hackneyed fishwrap with the day's newspapers. Today, news no longer lasts half a day, it rots in the blink of an eye.

With this pace of absurd speed where any possible rectification dies buried, there is no time for reflection, much less for calm professional introspection.

You have to keep generating a hundred or two hundred pieces a day because the machine doesn't stop and the competition grows and eats your toast. We have to give more food to that flabby and ambiguous mass we call "public opinion", always insatiable for anecdotes.

Metaphors, euphemisms, subterfuges, absurd questions, minimal anecdotes maximised to elevate them to a matter of state, statements with stilted conditionals, declarations with no more substance than the personal opinion of the person expressing the opinion, and all of this covered with a spongy, spurious and unrealistic veneer hoaxes all coated with a thick and suffocating layer of manipulation to satisfy the biases of each parish.

Whitewashing fascism

The cartoon of 29/04/2017 in CTXT

Those Nazis with their crazy stiff arms

With the different groups of Nazis and other fascist subspecies that have been braying these days in the streets of different localities, we have found another clear example of the degradation in reporting that happens by rewriting the meaning of words by adding definitions as creative as they are rubbishy.

COPE called Nazis "demonstrators" who make the fascist salute "demonstrators". La Razón took a risky gamble and described them as "violent demonstrators". Telecinco baptised them as a far-right group that was handing out "democratic syrup", and for Antena 3 they were "people who were shouting". TeleMadrid refers to the "reproachers" as "strangers", but they play their cards close to their chest and in the piece they describe them as fascists. For El Español they were "radicals".

In 20 Minutos they were a far-right group and in La Información they speak of "five men" who gave a fascist salute. For La Voz de Galicia they were also "men" shouting. In EFE they were also "five people with far-right aesthetics". The agency, which already smelled something Nazi in the clothing and gestures, was not clear either, and at the last minute could not find the correct definition.

And you can go on rummaging through the headlines, because there are (and will be) many more of these scraps in which kinder words are sought to avoid writing anything resembling fascism or anything that smells like a Nazi thing.

But then, of course, you can't call someone a Nazi if you don't catch him in the act of burning Jews. That's as far as we can go!

It doesn't matter if there are five or fifty of them, the style book is always the same. In the case of the Francoists they will be described with an affectionate and romantic "nostalgics". Also with the very laughable "defenders of the unity of Spain".

Nazis have even been called "voters". This is not entirely wrong, although it is highly unlikely that anyone has the brains to know how to put a piece of paper in a box, but the correct thing to do would have been the disturbingly accurate "voting Nazis", which also sounds like the name of a modern, transgressive musical band.

And to close with this pearl, a minute that perfectly sums up Antena 3's rubbish. If they do this live, imagine what they can do with what they edit.


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