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.

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.

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 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.

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:

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.

At the breakneck speed of technology, news is almost born already outdated, and errors and mistakes in the rush are so inevitable that journalistic homeostasis has adapted. My assessment of the year is to document a sample of the dialectical error/error that readers have been sending me.

In my year and a half as ARA's Readers' Advocate, I've connected with every reader whose comments have appeared in the newspaper; I still have a few left to respond to publicly. And whenever possible, I've helped those who've called me about technical subscription problems, especially on weekends, when the corporate phones are on hold—a piece of Bach would be good hold music; when Jaume Badia, from ARA's Editorial Board, and I were hanging around the Palau de la Generalitat, we played the aria from the... Goldberg Variations—because President Maragall liked it so much—. Now I wanted to take a step further and meet a reader personally, and explain who's behind this open access. And I hope to hold some meetings with readers, to be able to speak with those I haven't reached beyond the automated email reply, and exchange ideas face-to-face, which the pedantry, a victim of technology, now calls "in-person," although before, you were only physically present when you kicked the bucket.

Dr. Xavier Julià, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the UB, presents me with a problem that, in times of invasion of fake newsWe need to take this into consideration; even more so when the central issue is medicine. "I am writing to you regarding the advertisement that appears in today's [November 15th] print edition of the newspaper, on page 23, announcing studies in psychoneuroimmunology, 'the medicine of the future'. I am writing to you in my capacity as a practicing physician, concerned about the coverage of TRUE What does the advertiser get for appearing in a newspaper like ARA? It's a pseudoscience, without any basis, and the man who teaches it [Xevi Verdaguer] and promotes it, I believe, is a physiotherapist. Would you publish an ad for an academy that claimed the Earth is flat? Thank you for your attention."

Josep Visa Nasarre sends me a voice message while still a digital subscriber, announcing that he will cancel his subscription next month, among other grievances, explaining: "One of the things that makes me cancel my subscription is a news story like the one that came out saying that the player Iniesta has a problem with a complaint from the Portuguese criminal. And, especially if he's not Spanish or Catalan, but an immigrant, they never use all the full names."

Subscriber Josep Roca sent me a complaint about two issues related to graphic design. First, he points out: "Something I appreciate about the most widely referenced newspapers in English-speaking or French-speaking countries is the practice of accompanying news stories with good maps, especially when the events take place in locations unfamiliar to the average reader. And this is a major deficiency, in my opinion, of AHORA: a lack of maps." He concludes by providing an example: "On page 20 of the Sunday, October 26th edition, the text mentions several Ukrainian place names, such as Pokrovsk, Koupansk, the Oskil River, Vovchansk, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk. Inexplicably, none of them appear on the accompanying map. The borders of Donetsk and Luhansk are also missing from the map, despite their inclusion in all of Trump's 'peace' talks."

Election polls are inherently open to opinion, especially on the one hand kitchen which may end up taking on a new meaning (now, at the IEC, it already has seven) as a process of elaboration with the salt and pepper of demoscopy, and by a hermeneutics that must be the most important after the biblical one. Those responsible are the donkey of the critics' blows, for example, the tireless director of the CIS (Center for Sociological Research), José Félix Tezanos, a professor at the University of Santiago with numerous publications, who is criticized survey after survey. But for the moment, it's holding up; Jordi Muñoz, also with a spectacular academic resume, was not so lucky; he only lasted three years at the CEO (Center for Opinion Studies).

In a world where it's increasingly difficult to live in Catalan, reading a newspaper in Catalan every day is a space for linguistic freedom. The media are arguably the largest producers of verbal language, and it makes perfect sense that the linguistic debate occupies the top spot in the communications received by the Readers' Ombudsman.

In the previous article, in which we addressed the topic of intrusive advertising, there were two comments in the digital magazine that questioned the possibility of increasing the subscription price to remove ads. One was under a pseudonym, and the other was from Josep Miramunt. I've also received calls in the same vein, which can be summed up as the classic monetary question: How much are we talking about? What would the subscription be worth if we charged it for the cost of advertising?

The first advertisements I found in the almanacs of the Barcelona Diary They date from 1878. "Dr. Andreu's Chest Paste," recommended for all types of coughs and asthma attacks; J. and P. Coats's yarns; Dr. Ayer's "Sarsaparilla Extract," "to purify the blood of eruptions, tumors, hives, boils, spots, herpes, etc."; "Sallés Catalan Vermouth," the first made in Spain; Singer sewing machines; and a considerable variety of doctors specializing in venereal diseases.

On August 14, ARA's digital newspaper published David Miró's interview with Ignacio Garriga, secretary general and president of the Vox group in the Parliament. It was the subject of 126 comments, all critical of the content of the statements and the majority opposed to the interview being published. The Readers' Ombudsman received three emails in the same vein as the commentators. on-line. I publish that of subscriber Jordi Portavella:

Josep Maria Casasús was Reader's Ombudsman of The Vanguard between 2000 and 2007. At that time, he analyzed that the most appropriate way to qualify the pieces of the ombuds was the term so commonly used in the profession "chronicle", after discarding the legal term "opinion". Casasús also has a degree in Law and knew what he was talking about, and throughout his career he has combined the pure science of professional practice with a spectacular academic resume that made him a professor and dean of the Faculty of Communication at UPF. We also owe him the fact that, in 1995, in the normative dictionary coordinated by Teresa Cabré, the IEC – he is a full member – admitted "journalistic" in three meanings, one of them being the definitional one: "Science of Communication that has as its object the study of the phenomena and elements that make up the activity of the period". Casasús had already introduced the term in his book Introduction to journalism (Teide, 1988). We are fortunate to be able to read it in your section "Before Now", a collection of historical pieces.

Salvador Espriu, the national poet of Catalonia, answered all the letters he received, and there were quite a few. "The correspondence alone overwhelms me," he told me, and then added with his usual touch of irony: "Formally [the letters] are impeccable, because what I really know how to do is write letters; I am a madam "de Sévigné", in reference to the 17th century French writer, author of more than a thousand letters collected in the volume CardsI have read two collections of Espriu's letters and I can confirm the level, also related to the intellectual quality of his interlocutors: professors Antoni Comas, of Catalan language and literature, and Felip Cid, of the history of medicine.

Dr. Daniel Gamper Sachse is a professor of moral and political philosophy at the UAB, has extensive literary and academic production, as well as a translator (Nietzsche, Habermas...), and won the Anagrama essay prize 2019. It is a luxury for the Reader's Ombudsman to have a reflection from him, in this case regarding the use bring down as a synonym for kill. Your communication refers to the news of a shooting in Calldetenes, in which the Mossos d'Esquadra intervened, published in the news section on the 8th. Gamper writes: