Sports journalism has become complicated because the big stars are now bunkered and it is much more difficult to access them. The same happens with culture: more and more major international concerts impose stricter restrictions on the access of photojournalists. The case of Rosalía is paradigmatic. At La Vanguardia, the chronicle of her concert in Madrid was a mobile phone photograph taken by the editor. It filled the space designated for the image, of course, but it did not have the quality standard of a portrait taken with a professional camera and from the pit, a few meters from the action. A photojournalist who had worked for the newspaper complained about the intrusion, but – although she was right in substance – it is also true that the first obligation is to the reader, who would not understand a full-page chronicle without a photograph of the event (unless, as an act of protest, the media collectively agreed to publish a black box, with a brief explanatory text). At El Periódico they opted to publish an outdated snapshot from the Brit Awards, which had nothing to do with the concert. On the website of ARA, the chronicle of the Lyon concert showed a photo taken by the author of the chronicle between midnight and two in the morning, which was when Live Nation deigned to provide the official images (also a bad solution, because it goes against the basic principle of being the one who chooses the photograph that best represents that show).
From the outside, it may seem like a trivial matter if the image was captured by a photographer from their team and it looks like this or that: surely it is a wonderful scene. But the fact of allowing the gaze of others, that is, journalism, is at stake. And it is surprising that it is artists – often wrapped in elaborate conceptualizations and a veneer of morality to sell their work – who allow this unpleasant, homogenizing, and unsupportive blockade.
