Dozens of young people from a college yell barbarities at the students of the college across the street, the images reach Instagram and go viral. A former top Spanish soccer player with millions of followers on Twitter makes an unfortunate joke about his sexual orientation and then claims his account has been hacked. A former Vice President of the Government lashes out in a tweet against a popular television presenter: "You can put hypocrisy where it fits."
They are all situations that have occurred in recent days, which have emerged on social networks and on which La Vanguardia has reported. It is undeniable that the headlines they generate can arouse the interest of readers, but are they really news?
The cases are very different from each other. In the first, when the images jumped from the networks to the media, the stupefaction and scandal at such sexist harassment reached the front pages of all the digital newspapers, the President of the Government and the leader of the opposition publicly denounced the attitude of the young and even the Prosecutor's Office decided to investigate whether there could have been a hate crime. Without a doubt, it was news with deep social connotations and it should be published. The manner in which the images came to light did not affect the substance of the matter.
The second case struck another sensitive chord: an athlete admired by millions of young people jokes about a subject for which there are still people discriminated against or attacked in Spain today. He may be a simple skid (or a hack, as the footballer alleges), but he gives rise to reflect on how much we lack (or some of them lack) to understand that certain jokes today are simply dandruff.
Finally, the third case (of which La Vanguardia only mentioned on the channel dedicated to television news of the digital edition) was limited to feeding the gossipy spirit before the causes of the politician's animosity towards the presenter.
These examples serve to illustrate that social networks can and should be a source of information as valid as any other, as long as what is published on them is not taken for granted without first having journalistically contrasted it and assessed its importance.
At the same time, they also remind us that, although certain controversies that arise on the networks can be the subject of news -deeper or lighter-, not everything that becomes a trending topic deserves to be echoed in the newspaper.
