The media have the fundamental task of reporting in a truthful and responsible manner on events occurring in the world that affect society.

This responsibility is even greater if we take into account that a large number of citizens, not having direct contact with the events that take place, approach them exclusively through the versions presented to them by journalists in the different media.

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The responsibility of these media is higher, given that many people have few possibilities to contrast the information they receive from them, due to their limited academic formation or the limited surroundings in which they live, where there are no proper discussions on politics, economics, justice, etc.

A friend said that a journalist has a greater responsibility than a doctor because a doctor’s mistake can cost a life, but a journalist’s mistake can cost hundreds of them. Another friend said that lying about someone in the media and then correcting the “mistake” with a retraction was like pouring a bottle of water in the sand and then trying to put that same water back in the bottle.

Despite all this, many communicators and journalists, despite having received not only professional but also ethical training -because there is no school of communication, at least in this country, that does not include ethics in its curriculum- leave this training aside, or rather keep it in the bottom drawer, in pursuit of their economic, political and personal interests.

On this last point, it is troubling to see, for example, how some working tables of large broadcasters or newsrooms of some media have become temples where gods and goddesses, who cannot be contradicted or looked in the eyes, shoot their opinions disguised as information to a public that has no clarity on what it means to give an opinion and what it means to inform.

It is also troubling how two very important rules of journalism have been broken: the verification and quality of sources -using anonymous sources that are impossible to verify or creating news and reports from tweets- and the senseless protagonism of the journalist over the information.

The brand’s pip provides totally inadequate language, loaded with adjectives such as “scandalous”, and “explosive”, etc. to qualify an event, which only seeks to present the information in a sensationalist way in order to conquer audiences and gain followers in networks.

It is troubling, very troubling this journalism that is so distant from what citizens need in a country eager to know what is happening in relation to so many problems that burden it. And it is particularly troubling for those of us who educate future journalists that these bad examples of “professionals” of communication abound, causing more and more damage every day with their “disinformative” shows.

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