The truth is not dead, but it is mistreated daily. Unscrupulous politicians and media without morals have tried to make us believe that we live in the post-truth era and that lying has triumphed because it is much more fun. Donald Trump ended his term having told 30,000 lies, according to The Washington Post, and did not repeat his term by a handful of votes. Fox has been declared by Joe Biden as a “non-credible” media after losing a defamation lawsuit, firing its star presenter for knowingly lying, and its owner acknowledging that his journalists had gone too far, without affecting their audience.
But the truth remains what it was and quality press resists this perfect storm of indecent politicians and journalists. It is not easy to prevail, because on social networks lies flow at the same speed as hate messages. The New York Times had to clarify a month ago that they had never written that Pedro Sánchez was “the most lying and hated president in Europe” for his change of opinion regarding the amnesty, contrary to what a fake Twitter account spread, also present on Facebook.
For all these reasons, the innocent jokes of December 28 have practically disappeared from the newspapers and are mainly limited to the sports press and the online world. The truth is battered enough to make jokes. But it was a tradition until twenty years ago to play a trick on the reader, as the journalist José Manuel Burgueño has published in an anthology of the jokes of this day, titled La Cibeles is sold. Some innocent things have been premonitory, such as the breakup of the Beatles two years earlier or Ronaldo's signing for Madrid when he was still playing for Barcelona. Others had more bad grapes, like Felipe González having won the ONCE draw or that the Christmas jackpot had fallen to the Minister of Finance.
It is increasingly difficult to distinguish lies in the information jungle in which we move. And then came artificial intelligence, which not only threatens the truth, but even reality. So jokes, just on this day.
