Euthanasia is a very delicate, very intimate topic, in a society that fortunately protects privacy, legislated by the Constitution and the Estatut, which, twenty years ago, anticipated its time and in article 20 argues the “right to live the dying process with dignity”. Journalism must refine itself to address its complexity, to combine respect for the ethics of people in such a critical situation and the deontology of the profession, knowing how to moderate its approaches, Criterion 6 of the Code of Ethics of Catalan journalists.The controversy over euthanasia has reached our pages following the media uproar generated by the case of Noelia Castillo. ARA's position has been in favor of her right to a dignified death, according to the law of March 24, 2021, and the published opinions have largely gone in this direction: articles byEmpar Moliner, Mònica Planas, Josep Ramoneda, Ester Busquets, David Miró, Àlex Gutiérrez and the appeal for a calm debate that Antoni Bassas proposed to us. Elena García Dalmau joins with a different perspective in the article, titled “Euthanasia for psychological pain?”, published on March 28 in the section very appropriately defined as “Debate”, which she knows very well as a text editor. I note some of the reader complaints about her reflection.Subscriber Sonia Garcia describes the article as “sectarian, deceptive, and offensive to many people who understand euthanasia as a right”, considers it the result of “profound ignorance”, and concludes: “The publication of pieces like this harms the reputation of a serious newspaper that, until now, I considered the ARA to be, and on a personal level, it makes me consider unsubscribing”. In a similar vein, reader Xavier Clèries states: “How can such an article be published? The author expresses imprecise opinions without knowing the reality of psychological disorders”. Of the forty-seven comments below the article, seven question us for having published it.Founding subscriber Albert Martín starts from a place of respect for some of the opinions, but he does not find it correct that, in the byline, Elena García “adds to her condition as a philologist, that of “editor of the Opinion section”. The argumentation in this case points out that being a philologist does not qualify her to offer expert opinions on the subject and that, consequently, “by adding her position at ARA, she seeks to reinforce her auctoritas”. Albert Martín then details the core of the criticism:“But what is completely inadmissible and serious, and even more so when dealing with a philologist, is the perverse use of language when, at the very beginning of the article, she states that “And she is dead because the state executed her”, in a crude manipulation of language to influence the reader, worthy of a “Stop the presses” and unworthy of ARA.In law, and according to the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, to execute is to compel the fulfillment of a debt or sentence, and in criminal justice, as we all know, the application of the death penalty. It is not the consequence of an act of free will authorized by a resolution (not a sentence) that must be legally and medically motivated by a body composed of prestigious professionals and following all the legal procedures.Evidently –concludes the subscriber– there is an acceptation of the concept “to execute” as “to carry out something”, but if Ms. García’s excuse were that this was the meaning she intended, please, do not make it worse by trying to pass off an ox for a cow and have more respect for the intelligence of the readers you have tried to manipulate”.I have asked Elena García Dalmau for her contrasting view, which is necessary in my role as arbitrator, and she replies:“The debate about euthanasia and the role the State should play in its application has been going on for decades and does not have an easy answer. Proof of the difficulty of establishing an irreproachable moral standard is the diversity of forms that euthanasia laws take in countries with long democratic traditions. The hesitations do not only affect the case of patients with psychological pathologies, to which my article alluded. The German Constitutional Court ruled in 2020 that the right to self-determine one's own death exists at all stages of human life; Spanish law restricts it to a very specific context. That two advanced democracies reach such divergent conclusions is the best proof that there is no single technical answer.The question, however, is whether the technical perspective in moral matters – continues Elena García – should be the only valid one. I believe that the debate on ethical issues of this gravity cannot be confined to the authorities of medicine, nursing, and law: it concerns all citizens. And it is as a citizen who has dedicated a lot of time to thinking about the issue for personal reasons that I wrote the column. That my background—philologist—and my work—editor in the Opinion section—appeared is a convention of the newspaper; I in no way wanted to reinforce an authority to which, moreover, I could not and do not believe it necessary to appeal in this debate”.Regarding this last aspect, the byline with her position within the Opinion team, the head of the section, Toni Güell, points out that The Defender's criterion, already stated in other chronicles, is that a democratic and generalist newspaper must prioritize informational interest and publish all types of opinions expressed with respect, and even more so on such sensitive and controversial topics. Euthanasia admits many readings, interpretations, legal and conscience considerations. On one hand, there is Catholic fundamentalism, sadly notorious for its activism which is too often invasive and inappropriate. But without leaving Christian doctrine, there are nuances that we can trace back to Thomas More (Utopia, 1516), who leaves the question open, where Scholasticism preaches that “de internis, neque Ecclesia”, which means that privacy cannot be interfered with by canon law, one might say in a free version. Beyond the advances in medicine and bioethics, between therapeutic sedation and palliative sedation, believers who have to face cases of this nature have an interpretative space that allows them to circumvent dogma. On the other side of religious beliefs, there is also no monolithic thought beyond defending the right to a dignified death and the guaranteeing legislation that supports it, legal texts that they themselves collect varied records in their initial drafts.It is possible, in this dimension of such open diversity of criteria, that not all opinions are respectable in the opinion of each reader, but it is certain that what is always respectable is the right to express an opinion. Journalism should be tolerance in a pragmatic way, less grandiloquent than ethical dominance: by profession, we listen to and disseminate messages – not just opinions, but also when we inform – with which we disagree, in the conviction that those responsible for the opinions are those who sign or express them, not the newspaper. In reciprocity, readers have the right to choose what they read and what they do not read, to praise and to criticize. They also have the right to tell us not to publish information and opinions that they may detest – I have seen very negative comments, for example, when we interviewed a politician from the PP; the most recent, Ana Pastor – but I appeal for understanding that, in these cases, the journalistic sender and the reader recipient can manage a healthy disagreement that activates feedback and improves us all.The Reader Advocate takes note of doubts, suggestions, criticisms, and complaints about the newspaper's content in its digital and print editions, and ensures that the information is handled in accordance with the codes of ethics.In accordance with the codes of ethics.To contact the Reader Advocate you can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute to the WhatsApp number 653784787. In all cases, identification with name, surnames, and ID number is required.

In 2008, George Steiner published The Books I Haven't Written (Arcàdia), a collection of seven chapters on seven very personal themes that the English philosopher would have liked to write a book about but, in the end, never did, and in each chapter he explains why. One of them, titled The Languages of Eros, explains that he had had the “privilege of speaking and making love in four languages”, that each has its own charm in bed, but he didn't go into details, because the chapter put his intimate life at risk and that, if anything, he reached the conclusion that “shared orgasm is an act of simultaneous translation”.

The rise of far-right narratives is one of the common threads in the new Anuari Mèdia.cat, which was presented this Tuesday. The report, edited since 2011 by the Ramon Barnils Journalists Group and celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, compiles analyses and reports that address issues such as the emergence of podcasts that criminalize a supposed woke ideology, the rise of the techno-reactionary elite, and the access of pseudojournalists to institutions.

WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, has announced the finalists for the Digital Media Awards 2026, considered one of the most prestigious international recognitions in the sector. In this edition, ARA has been selected as a finalist in two categories: Best data visualization, for the interactive SOS: el Montseny se ahoga, and Best marketing campaign for Descarta el cuñadismo.This year, the awards received 811 submissions from around the world, of which 278 have reached the final stage, representing 78 countries. The winners will be announced on June 2 in Marseille, as part of the World News Media Congress 2026.

A newspaper's message is what we say, but we must consider if what we leave unsaid is appropriate. There is an order of informative priorities that forces us to choose and discard. The readers to whom I dedicate this chronicle invite us to think precisely not about what we might say poorly, but about what we have remained silent about.The subscriber Josep Busquets raises with me that while the newspaper correctly covered the start of the Iran war on February 28, it did not make any reference to the Catalan Forum for Peace, which gathered more than two hundred people at Can Batlló, and which was organized by various entities led by ICIP (Catalan Institute for International Peace). “How is it possible that you have not reported this as news?” asks the subscriber, a member of the Aturem les Guerres platform, who also denounces that the newspaper has never said anything – despite being informed – about the weekly gatherings in front of the Ministry of Defense sub-delegation “asking to be able to talk about other alternatives other than militarization and war, non-violent civil defense”. By those coincidences of semantics, the building – military government of ill-fated memory of Francoist war councils– is at the Portal de la Pau!Deputy director David Miró, in charge of the political area, replies: “As the reader recognizes, on Saturday, February 28, the editorial staff of ARA had to make a great effort to report on the start of a war that, as is being demonstrated, had the potential to significantly alter our lives. That day all available sections and staff were dedicated to explaining the implications of that war to the reader. Unfortunately, making a newspaper is always a matter of priorities and many planned topics, for example Mònica Bernabé's report on meat industry workers, were dropped. On the other hand, in Barcelona, events and conferences are held every day that, from the editorial staff of ARA, we do not see ourselves as capable of covering, especially on a Saturday when available staff is drastically reduced. This was the case of the ICIP conferences. In any case, we do believe it is interesting, even more so in a context of war, to explain the Catalan peace movement in more detail. So we commit to doing so”. In identical texture –musically they would be the silences— of what we leave unsaid, the subscriber Alfonso Outeiriño, in a positive tone because he is happy with the newspaper's line, nevertheless expresses his "disappointment regarding the lack of mention of the fiftieth anniversary of the events in Vitoria on March 3, 1976, in which five workers were murdered by the bullets of the then-called Armed Police". And he adds: "And even more so when the day after the anniversary, the newspaper Avui ran a report also mentioning Lluís Llach, author of Campanades a morts, a record denouncing the events”. The reader knows the subject well because he lived for 24 years in Lazkao, in the heart of Goierri, a region with a great abertzale tradition and home to the Benedictine monastery that preserves the largest documentary collection on Basque nationalism of all kinds.The editor-in-chief, Xavier Cervantes, regrets not having covered the fiftieth anniversary of Vitòria simply due to an oversight, but recalls that it was discussed at the fortieth anniversary and hands me the proof of three articles on the Argentine lawsuit against Rodolfo Martín Villa.The reader Núria Antonio i Aloy does not complain about a thematic absence, but rather, to be more precise, about a missed question in the interview that David Miró himself conducted with the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau. The reader, a secondary school teacher with 22 years of teaching experience, denounces that the minister says they are increasing salaries by 30% and the journalist "just lets it go." "They haven't raised salaries by 30% at all!" she retorts. "In any case, it's 30% of the regional part, which was the third lowest in the State... And the increase is spread over four years." And she concludes by addressing us: "Journalists should know how to ask the pertinent questions and master the subject."David Miró admits the criticism: “The reader is right that I should have better clarified what the 30% increase consisted of, but at that moment of the interview it seemed more opportune to insist on the issue that it was an insufficient offer and to extract from him the commitment that if the new financing was approved, improvements could be considered, but perhaps I did not get it right and I assume the responsibility”.Before closing the section, I still receive an email from Roser Dachs, who identifies herself as a resident of a care home, regarding Marta Rodríguez's article on the matter (March 23rd) urges us to talk about the workers in the centers: "Of recognition for the people who work directly with the residents, people with great dedication, who need to really like the job they do, and I think that by the administration they are often treated with very little deference. With salaries far below what they deserve."I have asked for the authorized opinion on publication criteria from Carles Flo, with proven experience in positions of journalistic responsibility. He was editor-in-chief of Diari de Barcelona and La Vanguardia, director of Mundo Diario, and deputy director and director of Avui. Co-founder of VIA Empresa, he is currently its business director. This is his reflection:“A great director, like Jaume Serrats was [he directed Catalunya Exprés, Avui and the news services of Catalunya Ràdio and was general director of Cultural Promotion], said that a good newspaper is the balance between the interesting and the important. Furthermore, each reader has their own yardstick to decide what is important. The reality is that everyone who organizes an event considers what they have organized to be both relevant and interesting. And they complain to the newspaper because their topic is not published. And there are a lot of topics every day. If we add the needs of communication agencies, the pile of news on the table, or on each person in charge's computer, is immense. To top it off, newspapers have fewer pages every day and consequently there are a lot of unhappy readers every day”."In my opinion –continues Flo– the reader should trust more in the judgment of the journalist who decides every day what is published and what is not. Perhaps we should reflect on whether what we organize is so important or interesting to be published. In these times, dominated by inconsistent news, it is good to trust the professional judgment of journalists when deciding what is published and what is not. And not to forget that not everything enters a newspaper.”I thank the readers Busquets and Outeiriño and the readers Antonio and Dachs for having placed their trust in me to help us debate about the news that I don't know if they ever existed but surely we never published. I value the elegance of the responses of David Miró and Xavier Cervantes and I celebrate the sensible long-sighted comment of Carles Flo. And I encourage journalists to count to ten before publishing and to a hundred before deciding not to publish, especially if those harmed are goodness and humanism.The Reader's Advocate takes note of doubts, suggestions, criticisms and complaints about the newspaper's content in its digital and paper editions, and ensures that the treatment of information is in accordance with the deontological codes.To contact the Reader's Advocate you can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute to the WhatsApp number 653784787. In all cases, identification with name, surnames and ID number is required.

Subscriber Ricard Casas sends me a comment, which he elegantly refrains from elevating to the category of complaint, about the echo – rather little echo – that the newspaper gives to RCD Espanyol de Barcelona.

On Monday, in the evening edition of Telediario on La 1, the correspondent in Jerusalem, Marc Campdelacreu, explained how the warlike conflict was affecting how journalists reported: “Israel and Iran have been monitoring what we film and what we report from day one. And not only for the impact on public opinion or their populations, but also to avoid showing their weaknesses to rivals”. In a subsequent report, he explained how this battle for the narrative affected the press: he revealed that on February 28, international journalists in the area received mobile messages from the Israeli military censorship department, detailing the limits of what they could report. Campdelacreu explained how those conditions affected, for example, what the camera could show at that exact moment. He then specified some of these limitations, which had to do with the impact of missiles, the buildings that could be shown, and the identification of anti-aircraft batteries. The correspondent explained that there is even an official department that could review their footage, and pointed out the consequences of not respecting the rules: the army could withdraw their accreditation to work, cancel their visas, and even expel them from the country. Furthermore, he explained that in Iran they always had to work accompanied by a professional, a fixer, authorized by the Iranian regime. And this implied a loss of freedom when moving around, the impossibility of broadcasting live from the street, and the requirement to only show demonstrations that supported the regime.This journalistic context is relevant for understanding the working conditions of correspondents and, above all, to remind us that this situation forces us, as spectators, to read the reports that reach us from there more attentively and between the lines.Last week, however, we noted that sometimes information control can be exercised in another way. In the regrettable program Horizonte, on Cuatro, hosted by Iker Jiménez, they connected with Mediaset correspondent Laura de Chiclana, who explained how in some neighborhoods of Haifa not all the population had access to shelters, especially Arab citizens. It was not the first time a media outlet had reported on this reality, but nevertheless, something unusual happened. The co-presenter, Carmen Porter, discredited the correspondent live and corrected her, saying she had just received a correction on her mobile “from the Jewish community” denying what the journalist had explained and calling her report rumor and disinformation. The program even removed Laura de Chiclana's report from its digital platform. It is one thing to want to guarantee the veracity of information or to verify it, and another is to appeal on the fly to anonymous and very undefined sources to belittle the version of a journalist who was working on the ground and relying on testimonies.

Degà from the European press to Paris, Juan Pedro Quiñonero is a rare bird It is difficult to understand what you have seen in the newspapers you have visited for more than 40 years. At the end of any pass he will publish some memoirs, titles From the Europe of freedoms to the Europe of the extreme right (Guillermo Escolar Editor), and in this interview he also recounts the glories and miseries of the correspondents' lives, some indiscreet phrases from Felipe González and his vision of Europe from the Parisian perspective that allows for a view from both perspectives.

The journalist Mar Bermúdez (Barcelona, ​​1998) goes report your boss in The MainThe former director of Catalunya Ràdio, Saúl Gordillo, was arrested in December 2022 for sexual assault. A case that would end in sentencing Two years later. And in 2025, Gordillo agreed to a sentence of one and a half years in prison for the sexual assault of a second female employee of the media outlet he directed in 2022. The MainNow Bermúdez recounts the experience he had in The sins of a feminist: the awakening of a journalistic #MeToo movement (Ara Llibres), a book that narrates, from a feminist perspective and with a structure based on the seven deadly sins, what it means to denounce a powerful person with influential friends. Which is the worst deadly sin?

Subscriber Carles Ferrer Casas, a secondary school teacher at the Joaquim Mir Institute in Vilanova i la Geltrú, wrote me a very well-reasoned letter, with many points on the agenda, which I hasten to acknowledge for its value. He begins by noting that few are published letters from readersAnd this is detrimental to some of my own opinions, in which, as a teacher, I would say my own regarding the problems of teaching, which is the crux of the email you sent me, but with exquisite fair play, He doesn't complain.

The newspaper "Avui" has reached half a century of history and commemorates it with an exhibition at the Palau Robert that can be visited from this Tuesday until May 24. "Avui 50+. Since 1976, news, language and country" chronicles the 50 years of history of the first Catalan newspaper after the Franco dictatorship and has been organized by the Hermes Comunicació group and the Directorate General of Dissemination, and curated by Toni Brosa, Carles Sabaté and Jordi Panyella. The exhibition features photographs, audiovisual material, historical documents, emblematic covers, and even works by artists such as Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies, among many others. The exhibition is a journey through time that reaches up to 2026, when it is already "El Punt Avui".

The journalist who proposes a topic must answer the inevitable question from the section editors or newsroom staff: What's the headline? "No crime, no perpetrator," goes the legal jargon, and if there's no headline, there's no news, we could say in the journalistic realm. The headline is, in every sense, even topographically and typographically, the most important part of an article. Everyone will read it; it's 100% readership.

I confess that at lunchtime I sometimes turn on La 1 to catch the end of the program hosted by Valencian journalist Javier Ruiz (52 years old), with his colleague and partner Sarah Santaolalla (27 years old). Ruiz's mannerisms are reminiscent of some broadcasters of yesteryear, like Alfredo Amestoy or Jesús Hermida; Santaolalla's are harder to categorize. In any case, the program makes it impossible not to recall formats from the late 1990s (everything comes back around) and content similar to that of the news programs during the Rajoy era, although the current ones, obviously, serve to construct a daily hagiography of Pedro Sánchez and his government. The younger members of the group may no longer remember that this style, where information and opinion merge in a viscous way, was introduced to Spain by the old José María Carrascal. Today it's simply part of the norm.

When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post In 2013, it was clear that the Graham family wasn't expecting to get rich from the deal—he already possessed one of the largest fortunes on the planet as the owner of Amazon—but rather intended to demonstrate that he could save a historic newspaper that was then facing serious problems. But despite the initial years of expansion and new hires, the results haven't fully materialized, and now the businessman has decided to begin streamlining the newspaper's structure. The paper is famous for having helped uncover the Watergate scandal, which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Specifically, it's estimated that the newspaper will lay off 300 journalists, representing more than a third of its 800 staff members. The newsrooms that will be most affected are sports, international, and local news. There will also be layoffs in management. As the newspaper's director explained to staff this Wednesday morning, the paper has been losing too much money for too long and is no longer meeting readers' needs. Therefore, the newspaper will focus primarily on coverage of national politics, the economy, and health, at the expense of other areas. In fact, the sports section will close, although some journalists will remain to cover special events or produce specific reports. Regarding international coverage, a dozen bureaus will be maintained, but layoffs have already been announced in the Middle East, India, and Australia. The section head has asked to be fired because he refuses to lead the cuts in his area. The editor of Washington Post In this latest phase, it was Will Lewis who unsuccessfully attempted to revamp the newspaper by implementing, among other measures, artificial intelligence as a tool to boost commentary. In a staff meeting a year and a half ago, he issued a warning that has proven prophetic: "We're losing a lot of money. Your readership has halved in recent years. People aren't reading what you write."

On December 8th, subscriber Andreu Suriol sent me a brief, ironic email: "Is Korea resuming 'exports' (and we'll be fed Korean pigs) or 'imports' (and they'll eat ours)?" Dr. Carola Duran Tort, a philologist, member of the Verdaguer Society, and author of an interesting bibliography on 19th-century Catalan literature and Catalanism, wrote to me the same day about the topic and explained her reasoning:

American journalist Don Lemon, former star anchor of CNN, was released on bail this Friday (Saturday in Catalonia), approximately one day after being arrested in Los Angeles for allegedly violating federal law while covering a protest at a church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, against the Trump administration's immigration raids. Georgia Fort, also a CNN journalist arrested the same day, remains in custody.

A special correspondent makes sense if the news story takes place at a party, a celebration, an anniversary. In this case, it's fun, woman of color, to ask ordinary people questions, to be there sharing their excitement. "And how long have you been waiting to see your idol?" If it's a catastrophe, it doesn't make much sense. Before, when there were no cameras, the special correspondent reported on the war, the truce, and the cries of the victims. They were the "eyes" of those who wanted to know. Now, having journalists from news programs "on the ground" only clutters the area, because there are so many of them and they all want the same thing. The cameras, all in the same place, show us the same thing. It's understandable that twenty journalists ask an artist twenty times who designed their outfit. But it's not understandable that twenty journalists ask the same survivor twenty times what the minutes before the tragedy were like. What's the point of a studio there, at the scene of the events? It doesn't help to inform, it only helps to feed the hype. We want to see wreckage, people crying, personal belongings scattered on the ground, people talking about "luck" (who are being pressured to talk about "luck"). And we want to be genuinely affected.

Subscriber Mercè Piqueras sent me a complaint that raises a topic as important as the relationship between journalism and literature, a recurring theme in this section, which confirms that it is and will continue to be a subject of ongoing reflection and re-evaluation. Biologist Mercè Piqueras knows the world of the press very well; she is, after all, a remarkable communicator who has excelled in science communication and contributes to various media outlets. among them the NOWand distinguished with the IEC award. With a modesty that does her credit, she doesn't tell me her CV in the email.

Newspaper archives aren't always cruel: they can also be soothing. Like when you realize that catastrophes predicted in the past end up becoming healthy habits decades later. The good people of The pessimists archive He has compiled a splendid collection of clippings on the subject: articles from a century ago in which, for example, reading was considered a way of ruining necessary rest, and some even argued that it should be prohibited for those under 18, to protect their eyes. "It's as bad as taking drugs," declared a doctor in the magazine. The LancetTherefore, insomniacs who now feel guilty for disobeying the advice not to succumb toscroll The endless stream of messages on their mobile phone screens can offer the (meager) consolation that perhaps in a hundred years this will be a medical recommendation, because an even worse practice will have taken hold.