Spanish media boasting coverage in Paris attacks

The night of 14^th November in Paris a jihadist terrorist band armed with Kalashnikovs broke into the Bataclan music club during the concert of the rock band Eagles of Death metal and killed there and in other points of the city a total of 130 people in the name of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which is responsible for nearly 1,000 civilian deaths outside Iraq and Syria. Paris bloodshed may be the latest of many ISIS attacks all around the world. Notwithstanding, ISIS (or ISIL) has a long history of attacking civilian targets in mostly non-Western countries.

These news have emerged a shocked and outrageous groundswell in the first world. It has proved several undeniable facts very well known before the tragedy: mainstream media give more importance to the attacks in the first world than the war in the third world, as if the murdered people in France were a crime to the humanity and assassinated people in Syria were merely collateral damages. Many people seem to know who is guilty of this barbarism. For some the responsible is Islam, religion and even the machismo. For others the responsibility lies in the western governments. Suddenly, it comes up to my mind a quote from the journalist H. L. Mencken: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”.

What I am trying to say within this introduction is that in front of this kind of tragedies, more than never, public audience need well-contextualized pieces of journalism which do not rush and do not lead to more misunderstanding of the facts. In other words, we need information that does not lead to misinformation and heightens the wheel of hatred. Unfortunately, once again, the mainstream Spanish media did several fail attempts on covering this attacks. Most of the mainstream private media were obsessed rather of boasting coverage and luring audience with sensationalism than giving real facts about what happened. Thanks to the social networks, viewers realized of the terrible information pieces that mainstream media published. Of course, one of the main results were myriad funny memes.

First of all, only the public state 24 hours news channel began almost immediately life coverage of the slaughter caused by the seven simultaneous attacks Friday night. The solely national generalist television who covered this tragedy. Mediaset (Cuatro and Telecinco) and Atresmedia (Antena 3 and La Sexta), the channels with most viewers in Spain, continued their programming. La Sexta continued to broadcast the 'Research Team' program. Cuatro did likewise, which did not interrupt at any time emitting 'Big Brother' show. La 1, the public state television, by contrast, interrupted twice broadcasting the programmed film to tell viewers they could keep up in the 24 hours Channel. Twitter was filled with criticism of the mainstream media because of the blackout. It was hard to find life images of the slaughter from Spain.

          On the other hand, there is a certain group of Spanish journalists that consider themselves as media stars. They love showing off their journalism skills and obviously, they had to cover the news right in the place. Their work over there has been pretty questioned in social networks. They were accused of desired for attention-seeking, eagerness and sensationalism.

          A day after the attacks, the news director of la Sexta, Antonio Garcia Ferreras, was traveling to the French capital. During the day, he was broadcasted several times in live. It was his connection during program LaSextaNoche the most criticized in social networks due to the fact that he did not know one word in French which woke up an array of jokes. La Sexta could not have sent someone who could speak French? The hashtag #CretinosForParís (#DouchebagsForParis) collected several memes on the work of Ferreras.

          The journalist of the private national radio La Cope, Carlos Herrera, was one of the protagonists of the controversy over the media. He took a selfie in front of the music club Bataclan, where 87 people were killed. This selfie set the public opinion of the social networks on fire. Twitter was filled with angry tweets with the selfie. Most of them were parodies photomontages showing the radio presenter in tragic historical events or fictional places, like in Hiroshima or the death of Bambi's mother.

Original Selfie

memes

          Television presenters Ana Rosa Quintana and Susanna Griso, from Telecinco and Antena 3 respectively, also moved to Paris as a Herreras’ selfie tweet confirmed upon arrival at the airport. Ana Rosa Quintana did really screw up when she started live broadcasting during the minute of silence that was kept in the Republic Square, where 19 people died. She broke the act of respect for the spectators of her program. "Right now is occurring here a minute of silence. It's really emotional, I want you to listen to the silence. When the minute is silence finished, which we will fully respect, we will talk to a Spanish actor…” she said.

One of the most notorious mistakes was the publication of a fake both in the conservative newspaper La Razón and the private television Antena 3 of a terrorist involved in the Paris attacks smiley taking a selfie while holding the Koran and wearing a bulletproof vest. The picture happened to be a fake photomontage, where the Canadian journalist Veerender Jubbal was in the original photo posing with an iPad in his hands. The following morning there was no correction in the newspaper at all. The only reference to the subject was on page 20. In a small image at the bottom of the page, accusing the Internet for the error: "False murderer thanks to the Internet". The publication does not mention that the newspaper used the photograph in the main page or explains any kind of apology.

Nobody thought that a Koran cannot make a selfie in a bathroom mirror?

Last but not least, the morning magazine of the journalist Mariló Montero screwed up as well with a reference to the pop culture. Mariló Montero is pretty well known for her controversial quotes and for not being really smart. Although this time she was not the protagonist. However, her program displayed a logo of the Islamic State when it was actually the shield of Star Wars Rebel Alliance. The program has already apologized.

Unfortunately, the labor of journalist maneuvering with rush and mess disgraces the image of much more prepared international correspondents than the celebrities media figures.  Actually, most of the time, they just informed about news already defunded by other medias. That means they could have done exactly the same work in the Spanish territory.