Media and communication - Back to sources

 
Media and communication - Back to sources
Faced with the proliferation of false news (fake news), Javier Cantarini proposes to return to the sources by revaluing the task of journalism from the perspective of human and citizen rights to communication.

By Javier Cantarini: The proliferation of the so-called false news (fake news) by the media launched several projects to detect and intern put a brake at least make them visible. Seminars in national universities such as Lomas de Zamora or research in the Conicet alert about a problem that puts the role of journalism as a source of qualified information for a society.

  Disinformation is not confined to the country since in other parts of the world there are also initiatives that realize the threat that scamming the population means through the production and dissemination of deceptive content in a conscious way. The cases of Basque Radio and Television (Spain), Projeto Comprova (Project Check) of San Pablo, Brazil or Hoax Slayer (Mata deception) of Australia appear. Nor is it a new phenomenon, although viralization through social networks is a dilemma for citizens that is prevented from making free decisions based on accurate data. While its severity lies in the difficulty of counteracting it.

  “Falseness spreads significantly faster, deeper and more widely than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false news about politics than for fake news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, legends urban or financial information, ”says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report published in the journal Science.

  A recent study by the Solo Communication agency concluded that 26% of users do not check the veracity of current information they see on internet portals and the older they are, the less they verify.

  Thus the way is paved for the media corporations to form the public agenda. As an example: who did not hear about the “Route of money K” and the direct association with “Cristina corrupta”? The deceptive content began to spread in the PPT program of Jorge Lanata: “Never in my entire journalistic career did I gather so many evidence about a corruption complaint,” the journalist warned during the 2015 electoral process.

  In 2018 Judge Sebastián Casanello ordered the lack of merit of former President Cristina Fernández in the case where money laundering is investigated, and in March this year the Federal Chamber confirmed the ruling. How many people knew what was resolved by justice? What is true of everything that was disclosed about the aforementioned cause?

  Citizens do not have the obligation to check the content they receive on different media. In theory, the media do not deliberately misinform. At this juncture, and without falling into the naivety of not recognizing the close relationship between media, politics and economic power, an instance is presented to revalue the task of the “best job in the world,” as Gabriel García Márquez defined journalism.

  Go back to the sources for the memory of those who have given their lives in the search for truth and to renew their confidence with the population they choose to be informed. Back to the sources to expose the mercenaries who hide behind the disguise of Clark Kent, and corporations that far from thinking of communication as a human right only see in the news a vital commodity for their inexhaustible source of power.

* Journalist. Member of the PAR NETWORK. Diploma in Communication with a Gender and Human Rights Perspective.