The president of the Association of the Press of Madrid, María Rey, made statements in Congress calling for politicians to “stop defining what a journalist is”. She adds: “We know what we are”. Are you sure? Rey's words, who is also a presenter for a Telemadrid magazine –ahem–, come just as agitator Vito Quiles has just staged another of his stunts, harassing Pedro Sánchez's wife. His clique, including sectors of the PP that feed him –the same PP that governs Telemadrid, ahem ahem–, try to wrap these types of actions in the flag of journalism to gain legitimacy. Rey does not explicitly mention Quiles, but the coincidence in timing makes it difficult not to interpret her statements in the lower house as an attempt to leave the guy alone.

I warn you that I have no solution for the problem I raise. We often talk about the news report penalty that it entails when the name of someone judicially prosecuted is dragged through the headlines and news programs, but who is later exonerated: the damage to their reputation is difficult to repair. But there is an even more perverse effect, which is when someone goes through the courts as a defendant and, taking advantage of the fact that they can practically build their defense on lies, takes the opportunity to stir the pot. “Aldama tries to implicate Sánchez without proof in the plot,” headlines El País, where the weight of the phrase falls on the weakness of the commissioner's accusation. But there are newspapers, of course, with fewer scruples. El Mundo opts for “Aldama floods the trial with details of illegal financing with Sánchez”. We must applaud the newspaper's subtlety: these details – a deluge, no less! – will surely end up being transformed into incriminating evidence in the reader's mind. But the truth is that even Eduardo Inda – hardly suspected of professing sympathy for Pedro Sánchez – admitted in a video that Aldama had not submitted any evidence in court to support his account.

Headline in OK Diario: “A Chinese man drugged and raped his minor daughter in Mallorca for five years: he put Lorazepam in her food to make her dizzy”. Beyond the first-degree racism of speaking of “a Chinese man” like that, crudely, reducing the person to their origin, what is striking about this piece is that the media illustrates it with an AI-generated image. It shows a close-up of a careless hand pouring a vial of pills onto the food, like someone tossing raisins into a salad, while the girl –who was between 9 and 14 years old during the events– is seen in the background, with her back turned, watching television. It is a grotesque and absurd image, because it is evident that the drug was not administered as if they were snacks and the matter is serious enough to speculate and create scenes that have no anchor in reality. It is true that the caption warns of the evident intervention of artificial intelligence, but this meager warning does not redeem its authors from the blunder of it all. Crime news is interesting because it shows the most extreme folds of human nature. But precisely because they deal with an extremely delicate matter, one must operate with the utmost elegance and respect for dignity. Painting news with the modern plastidecors that is AI as if they were comics or coloring books is a practice that, frankly, escapes me.

The letter X will haunt Felipe González wherever he goes, and the anti-Sanchista press wants to take advantage of the trial of Ábalos and his associates so that the current president also bears the weight of being at the apex of a criminal organization. The judge is not assigning any criminal responsibility to anyone beyond those seated in the dock, and there are newspapers on the right that are already satisfied with this trophy, which is no small feat. La Razón, for example, headlines: "The dozen pieces of evidence from the UCO that demolish Ábalos for his 'fundamental role'." On the other hand, for the hungry jaws of El Mundo, the ex-minister's bones are not enough to satisfy, because it needs to believe it can sink its fangs into a juicier jugular. And that's why it leads the front page with the headline: "Ábalos gave the highest level to the scheme: 'they have access to the president'." This practice of turning the words of the accused – who, understandably, try to shift blame and responsibility – into biblical truths is a curious and profoundly asymmetrical practice: I don't recall the conservative press sanctioning Bárcenas's words when he started to spill the beans.

The musician and creator Albert Pla (Sabadell, 1966) is now the presenter of Sala 30, a new program on Canal 33 that brings together artists who have at some point been linked to MACBA. A new 3Cat format whose objective, among other things, is to celebrate the 30 years of the Catalan museum.

Trump's first term already began with a disturbing logical aberration. His chief advisor tried to argue that when the president claimed his inauguration had been more crowded than Obama's —despite photographs clamorously evidencing the opposite— it was because he worked with “alternative facts.” Now, his most privileged disciple, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has dealt an even bigger blow to rationality. In a parliamentary statement, he was asked about the mathematical absurdity Trump had uttered when claiming he was lowering drug prices by 600% (which, if true, would mean that remedy would have a negative price five times its original value; in other words, you'd buy it and they'd pay you a fortune). Instead of admitting it was a slip-up, Kennedy let loose the following gem: “The president has another way of calculating percentages.” Yes, specifically a mistaken one. At least now we're starting to understand his great eye for business, especially when it comes to sinking the casinos he could build thanks to his dad's inheritance. Bring the calculator, and I'll tell you how much we're earning. The satirical medium The Onion hit the nail on the head as always when it published the headline “Trump announces a 5,000% increase in numbers.”

Mishima completed their first Olympic cycle of La Nit de les Roses this Wednesday. It has been four years since they were the first band to perform at the historic La Paloma venue in the heart of Barcelona's Raval after its renovation, and they did so by proposing a pre-Sant Jordi party that fuses words and music, as befits the most literary band on the contemporary Catalan scene. As Manuel de Pedrolo said, if they are roses, they will bloom. And these have burst forth proudly: if seeing them chanting Mishima's songs and the applause for the writers who acted as openers are the barometer, this is a tradition that has come to stay. 

The Mishimas completed their first Olympic cycle of La Nit de les Roses this Wednesday. They have already In times of fear for the future of Catalan, David Carabén sent an optimistic message: “Our language is in good enough shape that we had to go over it a few times these days to select authors”. The lineup was certainly a luxury. Opening the proceedings was the latest recipient of the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, the poet Biel Mesquida, who torrentially recited the last three pieces from his latest book, Trast

The arithmetic forces the PP to make a pact with Vox and, therefore, to assume part of their program and ideology. The conservative press tries to defuse the notion that this constitutes a somewhat humiliating act of submission –they, who precisely have this verb always at their fingertips– and that is why one comes across headlines like Wednesday's in la Razón: “Imminent pact in Aragon with «national priority» and no change in immigration”. Meanwhile, El País squeezes Feijóo and company's dangerous friendships as much as possible and opens its front page with “The PP assumes Vox's idea of «national priority»”. In the initial paragraph, they explain that this principle “points to the discrimination of foreigners”. The drama of it all is that the reader who does their homework and informs themselves from more than one medium with non-coinciding editorial lines ends up confused and not quite knowing whether the popular party has indeed succumbed to xenophobic policies or if it is Vox who has settled for a semantic gesture –this unsettling thing of national priority– devoid of content because what counts is rootedness, regardless of origin. Polarization is a close cousin of confusion. And a twin of disaffection.

What other Spanish word can be formed with the letters of somni? Ten seconds of time. The new contest Rescat wants to make the viewer play with language, so that they test not only their lexical knowledge, but also creativity and the ability to bluff opponents. The new format from La 2, presented by actor Peter Vives in his debut as a master of ceremonies for a contest, will occupy the schedule from eight thirty to nine o'clock, every day from Monday to Friday until the summer. It premieres this Thursday and, for now, there will be 60 programs, awaiting whether this production by La Manchester, Ricard Ustrell's production company, takes root and gets renewed.

Demana el Marca in an editorial sense that teams whose fans boo the Spanish anthem be expelled for a year from the Copa del Rey. The newspaper recalls, in a separate piece, that Law 39/1981 includes the penalty for "outrage to the national flag" and recalls that in China you can get up to ten years in prison for crimes as vaguely defined as "causing trouble". An interesting reference, the one from China, comrades. They could also ask to execute them directly, and charge the families for the bullet, as the so-called zidan fei used to dictate in the past. What the hell, I would extend the punitive policy to everyone who doesn't cheer for the king. And to Florentino Pérez, since we're at it: this authoritarianism thing, it spreads quickly. It's funny that they say that booing is a goal for politics in sports and that, at the same time, a sports newspaper gets involved with this political proclamation, prohibiting a harmless act protected by freedom of expression.

Second major change of guard at Apple, one of the most powerful technology companies. After the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, Tim Cook took the reins of the manufacturer of iPhones and Macintosh computers. Three lustrums later, the executive decides to step aside and will become executive chairman of the company, in a move announced months after turning 65. John Ternus, 51, will now be in charge of leading the company, in a change scheduled to take effect on September 1.

La Razón opens its front page with “Public-private healthcare receives international praise”. They don't specify it until the subtitle, but they are talking about Madrid's model, which, as they reveal, has received the endorsement of a study published in one of the scientific journals of the group The New England Journal of Medicine. The study assures that 262 euros per patient are saved in the public system, mortality decreases, and satisfaction soars. The editorial, on the subject, criticizes Pedro Sánchez and is titled “When ideology disregards patients”. There are also cases where ideology disregards readers, like this one we are addressing. I'll explain.

Poor New York Times. In the Sunday edition, they printed a crossword puzzle with the wrong grid, and poor readers wracked their brains trying to solve what didn't fit anywhere. Quickly, they issued a correction, but the damage was done, for those who bought the paper edition. Crosswords, of course, are not immune to errors, and in fact, the English name itself (crossword) is actually a typographical error. A violinist and editor, named Arthur Wynne, invented the modern form of this pastime, which experienced great growth during World War I, as a way to escape after reading the striking war chronicles of the time. Many decades later, today's readers still seek this refuge that trains their brains. However, the original was born as wordcross until someone wrote it incorrectly, and it turns out that the error was fortunate enough to become the preferred way to call it ever since.

Marta Romagosa is the voice, since this season, of one of Catalunya Ràdio's flagship programs: La nit dels ignorants. In this interview, she looks back at her long career at the station and speaks frankly about the bright spots, but also the shadows, of public radio.

The former Polish Prime Minister and current opposition leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, stated at a press conference that Péter Magyar, the triumphant winner of the Hungarian elections, had killed the family dog by turning on the microwave with the puppy inside. He attributed it to the memoirs written by his ex-wife, but it turns out that neither the ex-wife has published any book nor is there any record of Magyar cooking dogs like one prepares microwave popcorn. It all stems from a news report from a media outlet created just two days before this scandalous fake news was launched, which analysts link to one of the groups that carry out these types of operations for the Kremlin. The act of saying your enemy devours pets is known to yield good results, as Trump demonstrated a couple of years ago, with a Facebook post claiming that Haitian migrants in Springfield (Ohio) were capturing and eating neighborhood pets.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the newspaper Avui, which emerged from a campaign that today we would call crowdfunding and was then called the acquisition of co-partners: private individuals who put in money without expecting dividends or editorial control. El Punt Avui has commemorated it with a supplement of those hefty tomes where the bulk of the right-hand pages are institutional advertisements and on the left, in this case, there is a multitude of interviews with people who were present at the beginnings of the newspapers. I will stick with the interview with Jaume Guillamet, one of the most brilliant minds we have on Catalan press matters. He was deputy director of Avui and the passage of time allows him to openly explain Jordi Pujol's role in the newspaper. One of the questions is: “Did what Lluís Foix says about Pujol interviewing himself in La Vanguardia happen at Avui?”. And Guillamet replies: “I remember a call one day when Maluquer wasn't there. President Pujol is passed to me and dictates an editorial about the Loapa to me”. These are things that are also explained by the fact that the chairman of the board of directors of Avui was, at the same time, chairman of the parliamentary group of Convergència i Unió. However, despite this clear desire to manage the editorial steering wheel, the emeritus professor recalls that Pujol's newspaper was not actually that one, but rather El Correo Catalán. That is the medium he bets on, putting money into it and investing personally, while the other is left to the mercy of the little capital – however heroic it may have been – of the co-partners.

Madrid's sports press, that is to say, Madrid's, was dressed in black today to mark the white club's elimination from the Champions League. “What an injustice!”, pointed out Marca. “Until the referee wanted it,” added As. It was an indignation that moved one to pity, especially when one remembered that, just twenty-four hours earlier, a robbery had put a halt to Barça's aspirations in the same competition. But of course, since the opponent was Atlético de Madrid, the headlines then were “Heroic,” with six exclamation marks, and “Epic,” respectively. In fact, the Prisa newspaper busied itself with calling Eric García's expulsion “fair” on its front page. Of course, not a single reprimand for similar or even clearer fouls by the white and reds that were not whistled, such as the push on Dani Olmo inside the box. Or what about Pau Cubarsí's red card, in the first leg, which according to various analysts should have been a yellow.

One of the problems with vertical organizations is that everyone wants to talk to the top boss but their time is limited. Mark Zuckerberg plans to solve this by creating a virtual avatar of himself, which imitates his tone of voice, appearance, and gestures, created with artificial intelligence and trained with his entire corpus as a top executive. It is the apotheosis of the dehumanization of social networks that promised us the Xanadu of universal connection and horizontal communications. Now, employees of Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp will no longer speak directly to their boss or through the intermediate ranks that primarily serve this purpose, but will chat with him. If the practice extends to other companies, the result could be a festival. If you want a salary increase, press 1. If you want to be served in Catalan, hang up, annoying.

There seems to be no ceiling for RAC1. After overcoming the psychological barrier of one million listeners, which had been eluding it, it not only surpasses it for the fourth consecutive time, but with 1,098,000 followers, it now aspires to the next milestone of 1.1 million. The result means adding 97,000 more listeners than it had in April of last year. This is data from the EGM released this Wednesday, which certifies the good health of Catalan on the radio and places Catalunya Ràdio as the second station in the country with 696,000 listeners, 20,000 less than a year ago but 70,000 more than two years ago. The public station improves in several time slots. La SER is third, with 450,000 listeners (it had 386,000).