There are programs that use the war in the Middle East as a lever to activate fear. On Tuesday, a retired army admiral explained on Espejo público the different characteristics of Iran's arsenal. They had images of some missiles on the screen, and the admiral detailed their range, power, and lethal characteristics. The program's concern was to know if those huge rockets we saw in photographs could reach Spain. In front of a huge digital mural, they projected a world map. At one end was Iran, and at the other end, the Iberian Peninsula. From one place to another, they drew a large blue arrow, in the shape of an arc, indicating the hypothetical trajectory of the missiles. Below were three different models considered "supersonic." One was called Kheibar, another Fattah, and the last Shahed 136. The admiral, very pedagogically, gave the details to the audience: "They fly very high and very fast. And when they fall, they fall very vertically. And they can only be defended from very close to the target where they are going to fall.". Susanna Griso, with a certain tone of gravity, asked him: "Could ballistic missiles reach Europe? What would be their range? Because the distance between Tehran and Spain is six thousand kilometers. I understand that they cannot reach this distance...". The military man reassured her: "Today, certainly not.". Despite the denial, the image they designed communicated the opposite. The arrow going from Iran towards Spain and the three giant projectiles focused below made it very clear. Visually, on that map, it seemed that Iran had the rockets ready to be sent to our country. The man clarified that, at that moment, they were not prepared for such long distances, but that their range was modifiable. Minutes later, when Griso interviewed Josep Borrell, former Vice-President of the European Commission, the presenter brought up the topic again: "Is there a real danger of attacks on Europe?". The idea was becoming recurrent. It was about insisting on the hypothesis to make it present. Fear activates the state of alert, and this can lead to a certain informational dependence in case of bad news. A little later, on Tot es mou" on TV3, Helena Garcia Melero expressed her consternation: "They are telling me now that anything can happen in this time of military escalation, and I..." This expression of insecurity served her to introduce a psychologist. The title on the screen read: "Anxiety cases have skyrocketed due to everything happening globally." What is the source of this information? Where are they talking about? From Catalonia? The psychologist said: "There are many people suffering from sleep disorders and anxiety cases have skyrocketed." When she said "many people," how many are we talking about? What is the data? Be careful, because in these "educational" talk shows, a bit of rigor might be good, because speaking approximately is also a way of creating alarmism.
