badalona It is a Catalan city known throughout Spain and half of Europe. It has been for decades for being the cradle of basketball thanks to the secular work of La Penya. It has also been known for some songs and renowned artists who were born there. In the last decades, Xavier Garcia Albiol, mayor of the PP, has wanted to make it famous for the migratory conflicts and for security to win the elections with a kind of populism that has not fixed anything and has muddied everything. One of the bases of his strategy has been the publication of ‘fake news’ and video hoaxes through social networks. Where there is no journalism, populism runs rampant, without the slightest resistance.
This week, Badalona is once again in the spotlight for the celebration of the Copa del Rey de Baloncesto final from Thursday to Sunday. ‘Back to the basics’ is the philosophy of the current mayor, Rubén Guijarro, who came to office after a split in his own party, the PSC. Coinciding with this Copa del Rey, we have presented the relaunch of the digital edition of EL PERIÓDICO from Badalona promoted by the team of Txell Paune and Manuel Arenas. EL PERIÓDICO also goes back to basics, to hyperlocal journalism so typical of Prensa Ibérica newspapers. Proximity information, from Km. 0 with designation of origin, generates more links with readers than any other, builds a community based in our case on understanding more, without any other obstacle because when things are understood it is more likely not to succumb to demagoguery, be it of the right or the left. Some have wanted to build a world without editors, without journalists and without readers. That is a world with a more fragile democracy, we already have enough samples in multiple countries and situations. Information has value when it has quality, someone who takes responsibility for what he says or what he writes. The lifelong lie, which is now called ‘fake news’, nestles in anonymous information, in hoaxes, the basis of totalitarianism.