I suppose some theorist or PhD student in communication sciences must be preparing, or will soon be, a very dense work on the increasing presence —and influence— of crime reporting in the current information diet. Dark, confusing, unpredictable, bizarre, violent days, all in all. To a large extent, crime reporting has been exonerated by what we might call conventional or mainstream media from the bad reputation that preceded it. Traditionally, crime reporting was a genre that, in itself, constituted almost a synonym for sensationalism, scarce or null reliability, nosiness, and low intellectual level.It is no longer like that. Now black chronicle is justified by its “informative interest”, and because it is supposed that —according to some— when practiced with quality and rigor, black chronicle “illuminates” aspects of reality that usually go unnoticed by chroniclers of society, politics, economics, or even culture. It is an argument imported from the supposed sibling of black chronicle in literature, which is the noir novel, to which a social content is recognized that often, in effect, it has. However, concepts like quality or rigor always remain pending definition, and that which journalism and literature (and cinema, photography, and painting) do have in common is overlooked, which is the point of view. That a journalistic chronicle, or a novel, has “social content” in itself is a fact that says nothing: what is decisive is the point of view, the focus from which this social content is worked. What do you want to explain with that story, and with what intention.In any case, in times of fierce competition from so-called traditional media against new digital media and the pseudomedia of garbage journalism to capture the public's attention, the disputed and disoriented and fragmented attention of the public, stunned and at the same time hyperstimulated by continuous scroll reading and by the multi-screen bombardment, what the crime genre brings is the capacity to attract an audience. Nosiness is always successful, morbid curiosity also is, and crime reporting provides these ingredients in any quantity desired. We have therefore proceeded to lift the ban on "good" crime reporting, so that it is no longer confined to spaces specifically dedicated to this type of content, but is also incorporated into other programs, or sections of programs: magazines, talk shows, and even news programs. Because we have already agreed that crime reporting is of journalistic interest.There is no longer any need to be ashamed of it: it has prestige and is well regarded, however uncouth it may still be. Turning on the TV or radio and finding the video of Isak Andic stumbling and falling to the ground a few months before he died, or the recording of his son Jonathan tearfully calling emergency services in a state of shock, is apparently a matter of public interest. Or of true vicarious embarrassment: it depends, as we said, on the point of view.
