From the printing goblins to the intrusions of computer science
Joan Subirà i Rocamora (1930-2017) was a priest and journalist. His signature opened the first newspaper Today, on Sant Jordi's day in 1976. He, a progressive and Catalanist priest, intended to headline the news about a labor dispute "The police are already beating the strikers", but the Franco regime that reigned after his death, like El Cid and his wife Inés de Castro, advised the new newspaper not to go red in addition to the Catalan strike."
But It Will Rise, alias Bid, was as mischievous as his pseudonym William of the World and made another for the annals of what in Spanish were the "goblins"from the printing press and in Catalan –I follow Santiago Albertí– the "leaflets", epigraphed in the singular of the dictionary as "mischievous spirit". To these metaphysical entities of the fable, journalism foisted words or phrases that were truly botched but that could not always be stopped; sometimes they emerged published. He had a fit in a news story about a convent fire –fortunately without victims– that he had been asked to extend because it was short, and he wrote that the nuns had been "smoked", "burned", "scalivated"... The piece had been accepted as correct without reading it; the proofreader would not have been so embarrassed and would have warned them.
Josep Maria Casasús, author of our section Before now, in his role as Reader's Ombudsman of The Vanguard, had begun to encounter the first computer regenerations of the goblins' ectoplasms. In his piece of December 17, 2000, he already titled "Computers Make No Excuses," referring to an article by journalist Francisco Marco Álvaro (now a member of Congress) in which he described a person who had never even been a communist, Manuel Ibáñez Escofet, as a "Stalinist," and a "creative gift" as "healing civility," "Semitism" as "schematism," "lucid reconstructionist" as "lucid reconstructionist," "rows and trusts" as "phobias and philias," "open them" as "having them"... Álvaro reduces the memory of "the most relevant personality in postwar Catalan journalism," turning the positive meaning of his article inside out. The technical manager was a first-generation automatic spell-checker that, in certain doubts, was guided by phonetic approximations.
Today, as computing has advanced at an exponential rate, old errors have become obsolete, but new ones nevertheless arise, and the problem is that sometimes artificial intelligence prevails over human intelligence, and what happens is what my subscriber, Miquel Barceló, tells me:
"Mr. Batista, I am an ARA subscriber and I see with some indignation that this newspaper is massively advertising a scam. I am referring to the false announcement of a non-existent interview with Amancio Ortega about investment funds that are a scam. I reported it to the contact email, but they neither responded nor rectified anything. I apologize for all these months of publishing fake news.
ARA's IT services explain to me that the problem posed by reader Barceló is programmatic advertising that affects not its own clients but Google's; it's automatic advertising that is blocked as much as possible. In short, and according to other inquiries I've made, none of the aforementioned actors are responsible for the cyberpathy in question: neither Amancio Ortega, nor Google, nor ARA... The bad guys in this story are the 3.0 goblins who refuse to leave good journalism alone. Be that as it may, the newspaper is sensitive to Mr. Barceló's request, thanks him for bringing it to our attention, and will continue to make progress in protecting its readers from hackers. But, in this situation, I understand that ARA also feels like a victim—not a minor one!—there's no need for it to apologize, in a more general context where it would be good to limit the concept of guilt in civil proceedings.
Vargas Llosa, between the person and the work
Reader Xavier Jordà writes to me about the death of Mario Vargas Llosa and the controversy that arises every time the personality of an author collides with his work, in the opinion of those who do not think like him.
Jordà considers the journalistic coverage by the ARA to be good and praises the articles by Carla Fajardo and Amparo MolineroIn a similar vein, a few days later, J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip wrote "Vargas Llosa, reactionary and tolerant". The reader accurately points out the duality:
"[…] It is one thing to criticize Mr. Vargas Llosa for his hostile attitude towards the independence movement, and another to call him right-wing (which he was not) and even fascist (I am sure you have not read any of his books or articles). Zapatero government? Should we remember that he wrote a monument to Irish nationalism in The Celt's Dream, it must be remembered that he wrote a brilliant denunciation against all types of dictatorships in The Feast of the Goat?"
I would add that Vargas Llosa attended one of the preparatory meetings for the historic confinement of intellectuals and artists at Montserrat in December 1970, against the six death sentences handed down in the Burgos trial to ETA militants accused of the murder of Social Brigade commissioner Melitón Manzanas, the archetype of the Tortos. Vargas Llosa also climbed the monastery on the first day of the confinement and even gave a speech. From this unitary precedent emerged the idea of the Assemblea de Catalunya.
The problem reader Jordán brought to my attention doesn't affect the editorial staff, but rather the comments made by some readers in the electronic format, in which he detects "moral baseness and a lack of humanity." He concludes: "Anyway, I've been deeply disappointed by some readers of my newspaper, the ARA. Is there any way you can take action to ensure these comments don't tarnish our newspaper?"
I've read the sixty-one comments, and the general assessment is that the majority of the disagreements are expressed in terms that, whether or not you like them, fit within the framework of freedom of expression. Some provide data and develop the generic idea of the divergence between person and work. I note that there is indeed a geeky fringe—let's say—with expressions like the couplet "Dead dog, dead rabies, to hell with it and lots of cava" or, in this case from the Catalan proverb, "Every pig has his Saint Martin", or the charones "As a person he was nothing more than a piece of shit with legs" and "An ungrateful ass-kisser of the most intolerant kindness".
The ARA newspaper has filters to prevent insults, but it cannot cross the boundaries of freedom of expression. I understand that it is legitimate to invoke the legal right of "equality of arms" and ask of readers what it asks of its editors, starting with identification and not resorting to the bottleneck of a nickname to name the pig who is going to be uncovered. The issue, however, requires a profound reflection that runs throughout the history of this section and that I have been working on almost since the first day I served as Readers' Ombudsman. I am committed to, at the very least, providing expert points of view that help clarify the ethical perimeter of readers' opinions in the digital format.
Regarding ideological bias as a sieve for aesthetic taste, it would be inexcusable not to mention Ezra Pound's enhanced reference to infinity, committed to Italian fascism and the Axis forces yet regarded as one of history's greatest poets. I'd add that, in the musical realm, if music-loving Barcelona had considered Woody Allen right when he said, "Every time I hear Wagner, I want to invade Poland," we wouldn't have been the first capital of his great music after Bayreuth, and we'd be die-hard fascists.
The Readers' Ombudsman pays attention to doubts, suggestions, criticisms and complaints about the contents of the newspaper in its digital and paper editions, and ensures that the treatment of information is in accordance with the codes of ethics.
By contact the Readers' Ombudsman You can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute on WhatsApp at 653784787. In all cases, identification with your name, surname, and ID number is required.
