Monday morning, as the trial for the Kitchen case was starting, journalists gathered in front of the National Court were harassing some of the defendants. The only one who played along was Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who, with his characteristic cap and sunglasses, was eager to stir up the media pot. The character is responsible for tensing the atmosphere because he always performs better in tense situations. Amidst the swarm of microphones, a journalist from Mañaneros 360 asked him a question and specified it was for Javier Ruiz's program on Televisión Española. The presenter's name provoked an immediate reaction from the commissioner: “Ah! Don Javierito!”, he exclaimed sarcastically. “Tell Don Javierito that the PP did not hire me, as he says. That is a lie. Besides, Javierito, we were such good friends in the past... It's unbelievable!” Javier Ruiz, alarmed, interrupted the broadcast and, although Villarejo could not hear him, wanted to clarify the blunder: “No! No! No! No, commissioner! We are not going to have a live dialogue, but good friends you and I... We don't even know each other! Never in my life! You are friends with other presenters! You are mistaken! You tried to contact me, you did it by mobile phone when we reported on you. And we haven't had a single coffee. We've never met in our lives!”Villarejo, as if he had been warned of the response, insisted: “If you say we don't know each other... What a bad memory you have, Javierito, huh! You were worried because I was competing with Ferreras at the same time!” He implied that, in the past, Ruiz would have been upset by the commissioner's closeness to Antonio García Ferreras of La Sexta, and he, who then had the program on Cuatro, also wanted his exclusives. Javier Ruiz, uneasy, denied it again. “Absolutely false! You are lying, Villarejo! We have never had this conversation! You are a liar!” He insisted that everyone knew which journalist he worked for: “We are aware of who he passed information to and who bought it without checking it, no matter how crude it was”. One person's word against the other's and the mystery for the audience. Villarejo is capable of dynamiting any context. It was impossible to clarify who was telling the truth, but it is worth analyzing the commissioner's strategy. He deviated from journalism to personal confrontation. Since he did not have control of the informational situation, he took over the television frame. He provoked the journalist by publicly discrediting him. Villarejo is aware that implying complicity makes the journalist lose credibility. The commissioner himself brought up Ferreras's name in the discussion because that way he could put the entire media structure under suspicion. He exposed the sewers of journalism to survive himself.

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.