The responsibility for the accident and the media vultures

In the face of a catastrophe, there used to be a twenty-four-hour grace period during which the news narrative strictly revolved around what had happened, leaving the assigning of responsibilities for after the shock of deaths and injuries had been processed. This is no longer the case, and some digital media outlets were calling for the head of Transport Minister Óscar Puente a few hours after the incident. They did so using dishonorable methods. La Razón and OK Diario asked their readers via respective polls. Of course, 98% of their following demanded his resignation, when it is evident that it will not happen, even less so in the middle of an emergency situation like the current one.

Other strategies involved manipulating the timing. Some dug up a video from a few days ago, when he visited Marc Giró's show and made a joke about Renfe's breakdowns in the opening elevator skit. They also reproached Pedro Sánchez for tweeting a video minutes after the accident in which he was joking during an informal interview. It is obvious that this was done by the campaign team, which must have been scheduled. It denotes a lack of reflexes from the community managers, but for it to be one of the headline news items on the front pages of the most entrenched digital outlets, with everything else going on, implies having journalistic judgment completely rotted by anger. The headline in El Mundoo was "The controversial tweet by Sánchez published minutes after the train accident in Toledo", with the subtitle "The president has not removed from his social media a message from this morning in which he states that 'there are many reasons to be optimistic in this country'". It makes him look like a cynic laughing at the victims, because it is not indicated that the phrase is from before the incident. One must be firm in the demand for responsibility, and Puente can be considered written off if he aspired to be Sánchez's successor: the two accidents are an unbearable burden. But what has been seen so far is foul play and vulture-like behavior.