Excuse me, could you break my camera, please?

My television colleague Mònica Planas was commenting the other day on the cynicism involved in seeing certain television bigwigs scolding politicians for the tone of public conversation, only to immediately stir up the hornet's nest of tension with a stick once the solemn editorial is finished. They criticize the use of insults and hurtful videos on social media, but they play them with delight and amplify their reach. Reading her, I thought about how a journalistic subgenre also tinged with cynicism is being born, which is going to demonstrations looking for the blow against the poor reporter they have assigned there, in order to then stand up as victims. Nacho Abad made a scene the other day on Cuatro because his camera had been broken. A video from the Bad tongues on La 1 in which various Fascist homos insulted a reporter went viral. Even Iker Jiménez has had the stomach to ask for respect for journalistic work –journalism?– after some protesters confronted a reporter.

I will repeat the obvious, because it is a fateful era marked by literalism: physical violence is not admissible. Now, limiting oneself to saying this without noting that some programs are precisely looking for this golden television moment is to be hypocritical. The press is no exception: someone should count how many young women of canonical beauty appear in the foreground when they like a demonstration, and how many faces half-disfigured, screaming like maniacs, if it is for a cause they oppose. It is true that selecting the most extreme profiles of a march helps to visualize the sociological substrate that feeds it. But, at the same time, in the caricature there is one more element that fuels this unbreathable polarization, capable of preventing any minimally calm and rational debate.