The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, closed the VI Meeting of Ibero-American Journalism of elDiario.es with a defense of rigorous journalism and a call for coordination against disinformation and the manipulation of reality, which , as he pointed out, This particularly affects migrants and women.
Albares highlighted the importance of global communication spaces that social networks and new technologies have opened up, but which have also become “a vehicle for hate speech that we thought was buried.” And he warned: “physical violence is always preceded by verbal violence. And this is why nothing can be built on hate speech. Nothing can be built on confrontation.”
“Disinformation is a problem for serious media, like elDiario.es, and it is a very serious problem for governments like the one to which I belong and for democracies,” emphasized the Minister of Foreign Affairs in his speech, who recalled that democracy is “a system of discussion and debate, of dialogue, of negotiation, of agreement with words” and that this meeting can be achieved through disagreements and divergences but “not from facts alternatives”.
The minister also stressed that public institutions “degrade very quickly” when realities and facts “are called into question” and estimated that we are witnessing “enormous” changes that require us to have a great capacity to respond to threats to democracy, which, he stressed, is important. “As they generate uncertainties, they can be used to cause destabilizing effects at all levels. And the first step is always misinformation.
José Manuel Albares recalled how attempts to manipulate public opinion or influence electoral processes erode democratic processes and drew attention to those who deny freedom of the press, “because they deny the pluralism and diversity which define all democracy.
The minister then defended the need for coordinated action by all actors attached to democratic values as well as guaranteeing the existence of free and plural media “and that they are not subject to any interference, neither political nor economic”. He also called for an end to persecution and arbitrary arrests of journalists and to condemn all types of harassment of informants, particularly women journalists.
José Manuel Albares underlined how disinformation affects us and challenges us all doubly, “as people and as citizens”, and asked to “take care” of words and speeches because “there are words that unite and bring us together” and “there are words that separate us and “They confront us”. “It’s about transforming divergences into dialogue, differences into negotiation, confrontations into agreement. This is the ultimate basis of democracy,” he added.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs wanted to conclude his speech at the VI Meeting of Ibero-American Journalism by thanking “those who dedicate every day and every hour” to working for a better world “based on this humanist conception and this citizen commitment” and he expressly thanked elDiario.es for “protecting, caring for and defending journalism despite everything”.
