In the current times of information overload and when news (or nonsense) of all kinds jumps from mobile phone to mobile phone at the touch of a WhatsApp or social network, knowing how to choose what is news and what is not is one of the keys to journalism. This choice is not limited to the pages of the newspaper, but the digital edition is the main battlefront.
Subscriber Stephen Waller wrote to me a few weeks ago to regret that a gory video of an assault on a woman in China had been published on La Vanguardia's website. The images had been spread on Twitter in 2019 by an agent of the Civil Guard, who assured that the attack had taken place in Canet de Mar and that the perpetrator was an immigrant minor. This November he was tried and sentenced to 15 months in prison for spreading fake news accompanied by xenophobic expressions. In the images of the attack published in La Vanguardia with the information about the trial, texts indicating that it was a hoax since the event had not taken place in Catalonia were superimposed from the first moment.
Waller, however, wondered "why it's in the readers' interest" to play the 45-second sequence that "shows a man assaulting a woman with 15 punches to the head followed by seven kicks to the head as well until leaving her unconscious". After receiving your mail, an initial few seconds were added to the video with the warning that the images may hurt the sensibilities of the readers, but the subscriber's reflection is very necessary.
From the video team of the newspaper, they explain that there are many occasions when audiovisual material is discarded due to its violence or cruelty, but that when it is considered that a video, for the sake of information, does have to be published , the warning of delicate images is introduced and parts of the sequence are deleted or pixelated. It is a decision that is taken on a case-by-case basis and in which a balance is sought between showing the reality without sugarcoating it and not crossing the barrier of respect for the victims. The images coming from the war in Ukraine are one of the cases that have to be managed on a daily basis.
In addition to these assessments, in relation to the video of the aggression in China that went viral as if it had happened in Canet and reached more than 20,000 people, the battle against disinformation also comes into play. Could spreading the images again through La Vanguardia with a "fake video" poster contribute to disproving the hoax? Possibly yes, but it was certainly not necessary to reproduce the entire sequence nor do they need to continue to be published indefinitely, which is why they have already been removed from the web.
