The morning magazines on Telecinco and Antena 3 invest significant time and resources every morning undermining Pedro Sánchez's government and narratively exploiting the corruption cases of Ábalos, Koldo, and Santos Cerdán. This daily repetition therefore requires unprecedented levels of journalistic creativity, with unclear reporting practices and rather sordid narratives.
Ana Rosa Quintana's obsession on Telecinco always involves a series of women, supposedly from Ábalos and Koldo's circle, about whom they have obtained recordings of unknown origin and lacking context. On Tuesday, the protagonists were a certain Claudia—whom they always refer to as Miss Asturias, even though she hasn't held the title for years—and a certain Anaïs. Women devoid of a surname and, above all, a face. To advertise interviews or recordings that implicate them, they use small boxes on the side of the screen that remain almost constantly displayed throughout the program. This frame alternates between sexualized photographs of these women, either as Miss Asturias or with sensual images of them wearing little clothing, modeling, or even participating in fashion shows in shopping malls. Their faces are blurred, even though some of them later show their faces, but this way the connection with Ábalos and Koldo becomes more mysterious and suspicious. The number of images they have and show of both of them is enormous, far exceeding the real need for the news. In no case is the exhibition of dozens of photos of them wearing little clothing and posing provocatively, which do not clarify the political ties, justified.
Claudia's case was an exclusive onOk Diary, by Eduardo Inda, a media outlet that Ana Rosa Quintana always promotes and cites as a reliable source. Ábalos is barely audible in these recordings, and Miss Asturias's rhetoric seems forced to make use of the recording. Anaïs's case is that of the woman who was supposedly intercepted leaving Ábalos's house hiding a USB flash drive in her pants. "To go live like Ábalos you have to be very desperate," Quintana pointed out with a look of disgust. They dwelled on the details of the alleged relationship and caused confusion about whether they were lovers or if she was the woman doing the work. They never showed their faces, with a caution very unusual in this type of program.
Beyond what can be clarified and proven judicially about the cases of corruption within the socialist government, it is obvious that there is also a very powerful and self-serving media construct surrounding it. And one that is not very journalistically rigorous. Visual and narrative television resources are used based on blurring faces, hiding sources, decontextualizing documents, fragmenting and manipulating audio files of mysterious origin, offering inaccurate data, abusing anonymity, and giving irrelevant and gruesome details. Beneath the apparent staging of informing and clarifying, there is the objective of distorting, confusing, and scandalizing with morbid strategies to influence the audience's perception.
