Information Crisis in Big Media

The present crisis situation leaves in clear evidence the crisis of the hegemonic media and makes necessary another critical ways to inform and communicate us.

Big media has concentrated in communicate massively the official announcements about the measures to be taken by Zapatero's government face to the crisis. However, such measures have shown to be insufficient and the general social unrest increases day by day, making urgent other initiatives and alternatives to take us out of the crisis. Even so, big media insist with information only from "the Government's Official Diary face to the Crisis".

The result of this informative order is the construction of a journalistic consensus dependent on an actuality fixed by the actions starred by politicians (duet PSOE-PP as main actors), a media show that saturates and at the same time limits and manipulates public opinion. The consequences of these journalistic practices are very serious and make it clearly visible the crisis of the big media and the dominating communication system. Instead of questioning the management of the government and helping to the comprehension of the how and why of the crisis, pointing out those responsible and the possible changes and alternatives to the system, the media represent an insubstantial normality as if nothing exceptionally serious is happening, in what is the latest big informative manipulation of the journalistic industry which tends to breed and maintain this system and its crisis.

The informative crisis of the big media can be demonstrated in different ways; for example, by asking those responsible why did they marginalized all those who prognosticated long before and with reliable traces the arrival of the crisis. How can continue such toleration of an informative industry that does not alerts neither inform us on how are things really going? Why there is not the least sign of collective auto criticism for "not having informed" that everything was certainly awful? Why did they keep silence regarding the persistent reports alerting on political corruption and speculative excess which were swelling the real estate bubble till unbearable limits? And evidently, the bubble exploded and with it a big part of their remaining credibility. Bear in mind that the right to communicate and receive "true information" and the "access to the public media" are fundamental presumptions in a supposedly state of democracy, which in these conditions is very hard to believe. Evidently, these rights are systematically violated and adulterated on behalf of the market's domain by the large business groups and by the decisions of political leaders.

Another symptom of the hegemonic media crisis is the simplification that they have made of the crisis, reduced normally just to a "financial crisis". Nevertheless, considering all the problems and injustices generated by the capitalistic system in the different ranges of life, it should be more appropriate to refer directly to a total crisis of the system. But the government, instead of promoting changes and real alternatives to the present crisis situation, is using public money, which belongs to all of us, to help the banks and takes "alleviative measures" necessary to keep everything the same (as bad) as always… It is urgent to inform that the whole system is indebted, in the bankers hands, and the government as well as the big capitalistic investors need the speculative banking games in order to "reactivate economy". Of course, the big communication media, publics and privates, also depend on the banks and are tied to the machinery of the system, which situation results in a daily reproduction of this unbearable informative crisis.