Lawyers defend in trials, doctors cure diseases, teachers teach in schools… And journalists, until now, ask questions. Uncomfortable, if possible, with intention, with twists, relevant and impertinent. But that began to be questioned a long time ago. The inconvenience of doing them and also the close monitoring of certain heights by those who do their job well.
—If Russia has to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, should Israel pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, given that it has destroyed practically the entire Strip?
This is the question that was pointed out to the spokesperson of the European Commission on October 13. It would have gone unnoticed due to the response it received…
—It is an interesting question that we are not going to comment on at this time.
This is how the chief spokesperson of the Commission, Paula Pinho, responded with a gesture of: “You’re going to find out, because you’re smart…”. And surely later, she and her superiors in the executive that she presides or perhaps those responsible for the Italian Government grabbed their cell phones and demanded accountability from the media in question. Since the last European elections and the constitution of the new Commission, journalists who simply ask questions are increasingly seen and treated worse in Brussels. It is something that the best correspondents begin to suffer with restrictions and obstacles to their work. That more than correct question from Nunziati, therefore, can be a warning that serves as a lesson. Far from falling into oblivion or remaining as a simple procedure, it has become a paradigm of the dark times we live in. Another one.
@eldiario.es Italian journalist Gabriele Nunziati has reported that he has been fired from the Nova news agency for asking the European Commission whether Israel should rebuild Gaza, which has sparked debate over press freedom. On October 13, Nunziati asked a spokeswoman the following question at the daily press conference at the Commission: “You have insisted that Russia should take charge of the reconstruction of Ukraine. Do you think Israel should pay for the reconstruction of Gaza?” Spokeswoman Paula Pinho responded: “It’s an interesting question, but we have no comment on it at this time.” #gaza #israel #brussels #europeancommission #journalist
♬ original sound – eldiario.es oficial
Three weeks later, the correspondent was fired from the agency with the following argument from his agency’s bosses: “It’s a technically wrong question,” they dared to say. If the question deserves such a judgment by the gyrfalcons, what can we think of the answer they have given? Perhaps, morally and deontologically, they and their environment have fallen off a cliff. They have wasted due obedience, submission to power, wrong survival instinct for their armchairs… All that and more, which I am now silent about.
When decades ago we learned this trade in schools and colleges they taught us how to ask. That no question, even the smallest, is superfluous. They made us fear that anger and problems could come precisely because we had not asked well, comfortably and sufficiently. That journalism consisted of a permanent questioning of power, its relentless control. In which, those responsible for appearing before the media at a press conference, their expressions twisted and they trembled when they found whoever among the accredited pens.
Dark times came after the 2008 crisis in which a large part of the traditional media sold their souls to the devil to stay alive. “The party is over,” we hear people say. But in that sentence we later realized that not only was the cut in our salaries implicit, it also affected the exercise of the best journalism. They put our independence at the service of economic powers so that they would not be pressured with debts and also politicians so that they would not execute the visible heads of the boards of directors. This led them to appoint commanders in the newsrooms who, far from encouraging journalism, subjugated and restricted dissenting voices to tame newsrooms and turn them into docile swamps. Something against nature. As soon as some newsrooms noticed it, they began to fight exemplarily against these mercenary intruders. And they won. We won.
In many of them, it didn’t take long for that rampant mediocrity within the offices to fall to the ground. But in others, it persists. As in Agenzia Nova, which has just given a pertinent example of the world upside down and fired a journalist for doing his job technically and morally well, while the company has applied tremendous hara-kiri to its credibility.
I just hope that Gabriele Nunziati will not lack job offers from now on. The sooner the better. Because that will prove that there are media outlets that prefer honest journalists to submissive ones. With this they will prove that that nightmare, although it did not end and persists in a silent war of good against evil, has those who do not fold or retreat in the face of inconvenient calls. If, on the other hand, he doesn’t find work again, then we do have a problem. Not the journalists. Democracy, dear friends, democracy.
