Theme four: newspapers and their supposed neutrality

One story, different versions ...

The Museum of Contemporary Art from Barcelona (Macba) has canceled the exposition "La Bestia i el Sobirà" ("The Beast and the Sovereign") because of the refusal of the commissioners at the position of the museum management to remove a controversial sculpture. The work from the Austrian artist Ines Doujak could be offensive for the last Spanish king. 

The commissioners of the exposition Paul B. Preciado, Valentín Roma (who are in the museum team) and the German Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler have refused to remove the sculpture. Because that, the museum has decided to cancel an collective exposition from 30 international artists which was already ready for the inauguration at the afternoon. 

The work includes a sex scene of King Juan Carlos with a Bolivian feminist leader and a German shepherd while the king vomits flowers on a bed of SS helmets (you can see the picture here under your own responsibility). 

We already seen the same polemic new at different newspapers. Even if this seems to be very banal, the truth is a lot of newspaper from different ideologies and prestige have covered the theme: El País, El Mundo, ABC, El Periódico, La Vanguardia, etc. Each newspaper have treated this new very similarly, and the new is inside because of the type of image which this sculpture represents. At the first glance, they only have put an objective information about the facts without a lot of details apart from the opinion of museum director and the supposed meaning of the work, but really, the way that they have treated the new is different when you look the images and titles. 

For example, ABC, which is the most conservative from the newspapers in the last list, have covered a bit the new, without a lot of details. The image which they have used is a museum photo, there aren't any photo of the sculpture. Maybe their ideology doesn't leave them show this, we have to remember sculpture have Spanish king in a sexual pose with other real characters, is really provocative. Unlike ABC, other newspapers directly show the image.

ABC 

While all the newspapers have treated the theme only exposing the information without opinion, the online and free newspaper like El Diario, even when they doesn't say openly it, they have used the word "censure" a lot of times. 

What about less serious news?

About some news less serious, we would like to talk about the Cristiano Ronaldo’s shout at the Ballon Dor 2014. Here you have the video of the shout:

How we can see, this report have had lot of sport newspapers talking about this topic. Well, all of them.

Here we have some examples about this sport newspapers taking the event with laugh:

MARCA newspaper

AS newspaper

OLÉ newspaper (Argentina)

And another newspapers have taken that like a joke:

And mores title pages:

But in the other hand, more serious newspapers didn’t give the notice or only a few in their sports section: 

LA VANGUARDIA newspaper

EL PAÍS newspaper

ABC newspaper

The notice is not treated in the same way depending the interests of the newspaper because in all the sports newspapers it was on the front page but in the serious newspapers it was inside and very short. Also this situation was treated in different styles, one took it more formal and another took it like a joke. 

In conclusion, this type of news in some more serious papers aren't be covered at all whereas in others it would be headline news.

Shameful behavior of some newspapers

"Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth,
as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious,
contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news."
John le Carré: An Interrogation.

September 25, 1977. New York Times.

People, who make unfounded accusations without any sense in order to discredit the adversary, use the worse way to do it: they invent false information when, at the same time, they are letting themselves in evidence because the true always emerges. 

In Spain, many newspapers have made something like this. One in particular, called El mundo, invented that the president of the Catalonia’s government, Arthur Mas, has Swiss Bank accounts when in reality he hasn’t. 

Moreover, they have said this now because of the historical moment Catalonia is living: the independence is more alive than it was many years ago. So, this accusation in this period is more relevant now than probably in the past. 

They need something to make sure this way (the independence) is going to be bad for the whole country and for changing the results of an important election in the parliament. In addition, the government is always searching for something against this movement when in fact; they should take care of the bad situation of corruption they have to fight for. 

Is shameful be represented by these incompetent politics and how the media take advantage and, according their ideology or economic benefits invent or speak more about a theme that is going to affect others and benefit them. (This article was printed to try to influence our recent elections and is a blatant example of sensationalism with a political motivation.) People don’t see their defects; they only criticize and fix one objective: try to find that the enemy is worse than they actually are, which is a lot to say!

See this on this web: 

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/11/16/espana/1353057898.html

If you want to find another example of dishonest and misleading information just watch TV and you’ll see how Mariano Rayon is promising over a million place of work in two years. These words are full of lies. The economic situation is horrible and need a lot of years to make it grow again. 

Reality isn't presented as it is but they can't change the truth, which it's always the same.

"Famous people"

Many people think that to become a famous person, you have to do something important. However, in the society that we live, we know some cases of people who is known from everyone without doing nothing significant. 

For example, Belen Esteban is a famous woman in Spain who became famous to get married with a bullfighter. Nowadays, she is divorced but she continues appearing in different TV shows. She hasn’t got talent, but she is “famous”, so se earn a lot of money every month doing nothing. Another example is Kiko Rivera, who is famous because he is the son of a singer. 

A current case is “El pequeño Nicolás” (Little Nicolas), who became famous to sneak to parties of important people. 

See you!