There is often talk of the news bulletin's penalty, which is the reputational damage of seeing someone's name thrown to the media's horses. But there is also the news bulletin's anti-penalty, which is when this region's peculiar media system spares you this dragging because, on its game board, you are actually a mere pawn. They have just sent a former minister to prison for a major penalty of 24 years, but the headlines of the right-wing press do not feature Ábalos's name, but someone else's. Let's see: "Sanchism, condemned" (Abc), "Unanimous and implacable condemnation of the corruption that arrived with Sánchez" (El Mundo), "First judicial setback for Sanchism with a historic conviction" (La Razón). To top it all off, Pedro Sánchez occupies the photographs of the first two dailies: one would think that it is he who has been put behind bars. Although they haven't painted bars around him with artificial intelligence. Time will tell.
When you enter university, in some of the first classes they explain that journalism answers the classic questions of who, what, when, where, and why – in English, the famous five Ws – and therefore, things must be explained by clarifying these terms. Some add a sixth: how. But the Spanish journalist should add a seventh: "who would we like?" A substantial part of Madrid's front-page headlines have the subject of the news mixed up: it is not the factual protagonist of the affair, but the desired one. Given the accumulation of cases – the wife, the brother, the minister, the organization secretary... – it is evident that we are facing a systemic problem. But these are headlines infused with bile. They are not content with sending a former minister to prison, in what they could consider a clear victory, because rage blinds them.
