Stories on Freedom of Expression

(This short essay was published in the journal of thought "Roles of Novelty" No. 19, of Salamanca, June 2010)

Who wants that there is freedom of expression? What about information?

In principle, everyone is involved. Anyone who is making such a question in our country say that yes, he wants to see freedom of information. Then, the reality is quite different. Then, we all want to learn what happens to others, to have all possible information about issues that affect us or even many of them we care. In contrast, others get information about us, on issues that should be freely available, which do not relate to the private sphere of intimacy, is not so clear.

Any director of a media editor or walk in the flesh has experienced pressure not to publish one or other news. The reasons put forward those pushing are varied, some of them even plausible. Sometimes arguments involved in ethical, or political expediency, or solidarity, or any other Mandango, well seasoned, though.

It is less clear, therefore, that all we want and as we should defend freedom of information. I suppose, and outline here a hypothesis I have stated elsewhere, that this situation stems from the historical origin itself of the press in Europe. It has always had a vocation ideological guidance, the creation of public opinion. This explains their traditional attachment to political parties and the abundance of so many historical and ideological groups headers were willing to support them.

In the U.S., however, the press first, and other media, then, have had from the beginning a vocation information, communication of facts and events that serve a wide variety of the citizen to do better in their daily lives . Therefore, in the United States with less hindrance information flows in Europe and, therefore, that in Spain

The hypothesis outlined here is a simplification, of course, but that it intended to be a scholarly essay, but is bundling some thoughts along the lines of specific memories and specific events. Obviously there have been great manipulators of the American press, media owners who have driven at will, without shame, at the dictation of his personal convenience. Without going any further, here we have William Randolf Hearst, the tycoon who became known to cause the Spanish-American War after the sinking of the battleship Maine confusing, just to sell more newspapers, and so brilliantly caricaturizaría after Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. But that, again, is not the topic at hand. At least at this time.

The truth is that publishers whites in general and Americans in particular do not presume to interfere in any way or in the editorial line or the information of your media. The nine test this claim, as noted above, or cotton, they say the most modern, I got it when the pregnancy of private television in Spain, in 1989. At that time, the Zeta Group, where I worked as general manager of publications, prepared a project called Univision Channel 1, which achieved one of the three administrative adjudications granted the government of Felipe González.

The major international partner in this project was to flourish Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born American businessman owner, among many other media companies, Fox TV, Sky News, Twentieth Century Fox and the British newspaper The Times. Coinciding with its stake in Univision, Murdoch had also entered as a partner of Antonio Asensio in the capital of Grupo Zeta, who presided over the latter. That event was big news, of course, we came up with great display in all media and our group, with less fanfare, as was logical, also echoed other media in the country.

It seemed to me insufficient. I thought that this was a story worthy of appearing in The Times and that this would also benefit the image of Grupo Zeta in Spain and beyond. So without thinking twice, I approached Murdoch, a man with stomach condition constant grin:

- The Times will guess the news of his stake in Grupo Zeta.

- I do not know the great man answered tersely.

- Do not you know?

- No, because the director of The Times is free to publish or not what he sees fit.

As expected, there is over the story. The Times never did a line on the matter.

In apparent contrast to the Anglo-Saxon aseptic news items and the supposed absence of intervention in the communication sector by both public authorities and the private, Antonio Asensio was called to La Moncloa shortly after his project was rejected television. It was Rosa Conde, government spokesman Minister:

- Sorry, Antonio, but there was no sufficient concessions for everyone.

- Yeah, but the only one I have found the door in his face is me.

- Do not say that, man.

- No? How then would I say? Asensio replied an obviously angry.

- We count on you, you know, but maybe not wearing the right partners, argued the minister, in a veiled reference to Mario Conde, also participating in the shareholding of Univision.

- Ya. You have a nice way to have a ...

- Everything is hopeless.

- Well, tell me how to fix once attributed the concessions!

- We want you to enter in any of the three projects approved. But you alone, without these partners are carrying.

- And that, how come?

- Well. We talked with Telecinco and you would make a hole in their capital. A hole minority, though. We could go further.

- Is that all you have to say?

- You seem little! What do you answer?

- I think.

Antonio Asensio had already thought. And his answer was no.

Men loyal to his friends and partners, not for a moment occurred to him to leave them in the lurch. In addition, for him it was clear that the same government that had put the bow, which was none and that he had prevented access to private television, wanted now content with crumbs and so have you under its control, rather than allowing roam freely through their respects.

This is a very extreme example of government meddling in the media. But intervention in communication management, carried out in one way or another, is still common.

Also at the individual level, even the Democrats can not resist the temptation of the information is at your service and not of all citizens. Some, for example, confuse the genre of informational interview with a press release in which they can say what they want unidirectionally, rather than face the risk dialectical replication, the counter question, information nonverbal inadvertently offered the interviewees and personal assessment of their responses can make the journalist.

A clear example of premature all got it in Algiers, where Spanish was the first journalist who interviewed Mario Soares after being named the minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal after the Carnation Revolution called in 1973. Soares was there negotiating the independence of Angola with MPAIAC guerrillas, whose delegation presided Marcelino Dos Santos. Suspicious of a journalist who practiced his profession under the Franco regime, the Portuguese Socialist leader greeted me with an arrogant caution:

- Why would you want this?

- Well, not particularly what attracts me to the African colonies, but everything that happens in your country. You know, we hope that Spain will take the same democratic path of Portugal and also there are many common things between the two countries. For example, the existing mutual aid Iberian Pact signed at the time the dictators Franco and Salazar.

- Well, well, 'said the man, more relaxed, but get off your pedestal of contemptuous arrogance - And in what language you want to do the interview?

- I ...

- I can do it in the language you want: Spanish, French, English, ...

- Choose You, 'I said to my self-esteem crushed by this conceit, though I've never been in any language unworthy patter than the Castilian-but I think we can be very good if we continue business as usual: you talking I ask, Portuguese and Spanish.

So we did. But mistrust, Soares was interrupted at every moment to dictate how a kindergarten:

- Well, then put a full stop. Then type the following and attention.

That image changed behavior after I had recently arrived in the Portuguese political exile. This taught me that if we stopped we had better all previously in the cupboard these preconceptions and prejudices with which, inevitably, we approach the subject we're going to interview. Not long before I had made my first professional interview, when he worked at the National Radio of Spain. The character was Salvador Dali. Impressed by the reputation of the painter and his alleged neurotic and quirky, I went to the meeting so nervous that for a long time he failed to start the recorder. The more time passed, with Dali patiently watching my futile manipulation of the device, the more nervous I got me.

- Is something wrong? He asked finally.

- But I ... I do not know ... This device ... This is the first time I use ...

- Let me see me, I asked the man and took the recorder out of my hands.

- Maybe it is broken, stammered.

- No, I think. Look, I work, said after a moment.

- Mu ... Thank you very much, I managed to answer.

- Now you can comment all over the world, said the painter, happy as a boy by his mechanical skill that Salvador Dalí serves at least to fix tape.

The interview was pleasant, and the character, simple and friendly as ever imagined, has been one of the nicest I've ever met in my life.

My encounter with Soares in Algeria was not my first visit to that country. In fact, since Barcelona is less straight-line distance to Algiers than half of the Spanish capital of the province. So I do not see it was very difficult to convince Josep Pernau, then director of Diario de Barcelona, ​​the desirability of making that trip to get an interview with the Portuguese politician, despite the always precarious economic situation of the newspaper would end closing years afternoon. In my previous stay, a few months before, had been credited to the Non-Aligned Conference being held there, as special envoy TeleXprés, another of the many newspapers unfortunately disappeared with the passage of time.

What of the non-aligned was a collective invention of Indonesian Sukarno, Nehru Indian, Egyptian Nasser and Tito of Yugoslavia in 1956. It was that emerging countries engaged in a form of active exercise of political neutrality between the two existing blocks East and West, Capitalism and Communism, First World and Second World. The decolonization process in the years after that date payroll increased considerably founding countries of the Third World and that meeting in Algiers in 1973 was a fantastic kind of convention of world leaders. There were Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Pandit Nehru, who was murdered years later, Anwar al-Qadhafi, arrogant young military air Libyan desert nomad whose interventions were as pleasant chat in the shade of Haifa, Habib Bourguiba, the father of Tunisian homeland, and aged, pasty verb insufferable complacency, and many others.

I had never seen so much historical character together. Not so close. For someone so naive and so little battered like me as I approached them, those living legends were losing the aura of mystery and superiority and began to take humble mortal forms. In that environment, who did not have a mythical biography went completely unnoticed. In one of constant travel by bus from a paper either in a general assembly or vice versa, was sitting beside me a young man who identified himself as a journalist Rwandese:

- Are you coming tomorrow at the press conference of Colonel Micombero?

- Who?

- The president of my country. It is not yet well known, because his coup is still recent.

He was brutally honest:

- Tomorrow, like every day there are a dozen press conferences. I doubt anyone is interested in the of its president. To me, no.

Later, I heard somewhere, probably from having read in the press, that the colonel had Micombero another coup toppled.

One of the most popular figures in this international meeting was the evergreen class Fidel Castro. On the eve of concluding the summit had managed to interview anyone that chieftain inaccessible. During the recess of a session, Castro left the room where they were held, through a corridor flanked by soldiers and carrying behind him a retinue of staff and bodyguards. I spoke at that time with the television reporter Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, who was no longer the young champion of Spain in the discus and javelin which had been, and whom he still had many years to man-mark The Ruta Quetzal. Appearing Fidel Castro, De la Quadra-Salcedo ignore me immediately stopped and jumped into the Cuban leader between two guards before they could react:

- Commander, Commander, he shouted, - here the Spanish TV correspondent-which, incidentally, was true.

- Yes, mate, 'replied the Cuban dictator, dressed in olive green, while immobilized him a huge hug not know if it was affection or self-defense. Probably, the two classes. With the free arm gestured to her escort that he meant that everything was in order.

- I wish you would grant me an interview, said the journalist.

- Are you sure, boy?

- Of course, Captain. We would go in to have the camera and me.

- Okay, stay with them, said after him - and do the interview tomorrow.

It did.

The majority of Spanish journalists who were there went home the next day: José Luis Balbin, already yoked to its inevitable pipe, Antonio Caballero, a Colombian working fine language for Cambio 16, Alberto Miguez, we drew the several other heads of professional experience and who had written several books, including a brief but fitting biography of Jean Paul Sartre, and Cuco Cerecedo.

Cerecedo was a special case. Involved in the fate of emerging nations, had bizarre experiences in several African countries, some of which are collected in AfricAsia revolutionary magazine, which had become correspondent wheel. Unlike other special envoys, we harbored in military barracks packed for the occasion, he stayed at the home of Franz Fanon's widow, who had written a famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, which in turn was a kind of Bible scholars worldwide who fought against neocolonialism.

Cuco moved by Algeria with the same ease with which others do it for the dining room of his house. Playboy and friendly, easy writer pen and many friends, a lover of adventure and haunted by the women, Francisco (Cuco) Cerecedo died prematurely. In his memory, and with good reason, the Foreign Press Association for many years that animated Michael? Angel Aguilar has created a journalism award that bears his name.

At five years of that history, pretended Cerecedo collaborate with a short life magazine I had in Barcelona: Primera Plana. On the day of closing a certain number, Cuco had failed to send me from Madrid, where he was living, the ordered item, so I took a drastic decision:

- Take a plane to Barcelona and come to write the article in writing!

- Who pays me the way?

- The magazine, of course.

- And the hotel? Because I will not have time to finish returning the same day.

- Well ... Well, I screwed up -. We also pay the hotel.

- Right now I am going.

And hung up.

It was midday. Three hours later I was in the newsroom. He went to a typewriter that was empty and began to write the topics entrusted with that facility that he had. I was happy. Radiant.

Not even five minutes had passed since the arrival of Cuco when they knocked on the door of the newsroom. It was a beautiful girl. Lean. Rhythmic movements.

- Is Cuco? - Asked.

He rose to give a warm welcome.

- Now that's not cuckoo! For your mother just the article before you kiss anyone and leave her there! So do not step!

In a couple of hours the report was ready and Cuco and the girl disappeared as if by magic. What we do not have time to do was cancel the hotel reservation.

That was Cuco Cerecedo. At least, as I remember. The man I met in Algiers and the Algerian regarded as one of yours.

At the end of the Non-Aligned Summit, Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo stayed a few days in the country to try to make a story more.

- And the interview with Fidel Castro? I asked.

- Here it is, I said, showing canned coils.

I looked for a moment:

- Would you care to take them as you pass through Madrid before, so that the processing going on TV?

- I do not care at all.

I was very pleased, believing that he was working modestly in the issuance of an exclusive. Years later I learned that the interview was never broadcast. I do not know why: for political reasons, for convenience's diplomatic point of interest per game ... I had not seen, of course. All I knew was that a reporter had played the type to make it and that if they were faster than those bodyguards that he had laid hands on her waist De la Quadra-Salcedo had not been able to tell. All that, to someone far away, sitting in a quiet office, had decided that that simply was not worth it to be disseminated.

Some of that came in my mind almost twenty years later, seeing an interview with TVE was the dictator in Havana Rosa María Mateos. I imagine that something as politically correct as that was different as night the day of the non cream interview with Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo in Algiers in 1973.

What had happened in Algiers September. Just on the same days of the coup in Chile of Augusto Pinochet against Salvador Allende. One was a liberal at that time and remained for many years later. Guess that's why it was full of prejudice against the United States, whom the world progressive culpábamos of all past, present and future of humanity. Nor, for that matter, had any interest in traveling to the United States, imbued with the adequacy with which it ignores the ignorant contempt, saying the famous verse of Antonio Machado.

In 1988 only to cease the direction of El Periodico de Catalunya, which had agreed four years ago, I expressed my intention to travel company by the United States in Madrid before joining the Directorate of Publications, which was what I proposed:

- There are some tours organized by the U.S. State Department to teach the country argued -. There might know how newspaper companies, which journals are the ones further, ... And the TV! I added, in a fit of inspiration, we should know how the TV networks before an eventual granting of private channels in Spain.

José Luis Ervin, vice president of Grupo Zeta, great friend and companion of many journalistic labors, was responsible for managing the tour through the U.S. Embassy. Is organized and continues to organize, views of those who considered opinion leaders, ie politicians, journalists, academics, trade unionists, ... to teach issues related to their specialty, while imbuing them the American way of life.

I do not know what have happened in other cases. In mine, the trip, organized by the Information Agency of the United States, was a success. For me and, of course, for the purpose of its organizers. Then I realized that country and its people and from that moment I felt identified with them. Since then, too, have traveled to the United States as often as I could. Indeed, between October 1996 and August 1997 I moved to live in New York, following a deep impulse or whim, or a need, I do not know very well.

During the voyage of 1988 crossed the country from coast to coast, escorted by a patient and effective guidance, Nancy Hartzenbusch, the same last name as our romantic poet, wife of an Associated Press reporter who presented me years later and well versed in This mentality, of curiosity and even the foibles of journalists.

To Americans, that people want to know it seems the most natural thing in the world. So they are prepared for any possible question and give the appropriate response to being asked or, where appropriate, the most convenient.

I explained in the Department of State Ron Browne, who was the research director of the department:

- From 6 in the morning we started to prepare the press conference then gives the Secretary of State at 9 o'clock.

- And how do you do?

- We review the country's largest media and the world, see what their concerns are, hot spots of those who try, issues of interest to journalists ...

- But how do you know what to ask?

- You have to anticipate all the likely questions. Sometimes we process more than a hundred possible questions.

- And you do not miss any? Do not usually have a journalist who comes through the hills of Ubeda?

- It is very unlikely. Everything has a logical, well tested, can be processed earlier.

- But in the unlikely event that you said ...?

- You know, for it has invented the "non-comment" or "this is not the time to talk about it" or simply "discuss this matter a little later." But our obligation is to the Secretary of State knows everything not to leave any item unanswered.

If that is the preparation that politicians come to press conferences, informatively fueled by teams of competent professionals who seek early birds who were not miss anything, not least prepared are the seasoned journalists, seasoned in such necessities and a experience several times higher than that of their alleged antagonists, so to speak.

I checked three days later at the White House, in a press conference with the spokesman for Ronald Reagan. Nothing that appear on the stage, began to be rebuked by more senior journalists:

- Bob, not mean to deceive us today with the usual Mandango ...

- I have prepared a presidential ... She began to explain the spokesman said.

- We're with the press! Cried one.

- Do not try to get away on a tangent! Added another.

The spokesman sweaty trying unsuccessfully to be heard above the din:

- I ...

Hardly heard or got to understand, something more than what was being said, speaking simultaneously a number of journalists, many of them moving into their respective seats, from the well-intentioned efforts unambiguously by the spokesman.

And is that Americans are calling reporters public prosecutors, interrogators on behalf of citizens who are unable to access them daily to their politicians. In the U.S., in addition, ordinary journalists, reporters attending press conferences or cover conflicts in situ, not usually, as for these payments, interns recent graduates or about to be. There, seniority, age, experience, are a degree more important than the functional range in the ranks of the media in question. This is seen even in formal symbolic details, like the occupation of the usual seats political chroniclers, whether in the Congress, the White House or elsewhere. Woe to those who dare to take the place reserved for another, although it is absent that day!

If journalists believe in the sacred right to information recognized in the Constitution, American society as a whole agrees with them. I will relate a couple of cases, for me unique, that once I convincingly illustrated the difference between making information in the U.S. and do it in Spain.

One was my visit to the Pentagon. I'm talking about 1988, thirteen years before this insane attack on military headquarters of al Qaeda suicide plane left a lot of dead.

My first surprise was the arrival at Metro to the heart of the U.S. Army. In retrospect, it seems logical that a place with so many employees to facilitate their access to their workplace. The only existing security measures there was the presence of police at all entrances to the site. But nothing more. As if it were the Citibank or the Alitalia terminal at the airport John F. Kennedy.

My presence there was simply curiosity. It was the era of the Wars, the controversial war plan of Ronald Reagan, that sort of missile defense to protect U.S. territory for a possible Soviet nuclear attack would disappear after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I, as a foreign journalist had asked what he would hear the matter. At the Pentagon waiting for me the greatest Alan R. Freitag and civil government advisor, Dr. David Martin, who first brought the whole to me unintelligible explanation of this complex issue. To my face concentrated effort, Dr. Martin was interrupted for a moment:

- Are you understanding something of what I mean?

- Yes, yes, I understand your language, 'I said, embarrassed - what it costs me more is to understand exactly what you're talking about.

Throughout the conversation, I explained that the main laboratory for particle acceleration issue, the basis of the Reagan program was in Libermore, right next to the University of California, Berkley.

- I'll be in California next month on a course at the University of Stanford, I said, relieved -. Could the laboratory approach and see it all right there what we're talking about now?

He suspected that they would send me to gargle, it was logical. Instead, the largest Freitag kindly replied:

- Good! Pégueme a phone call when you're there and I will notify the lab to let them pass.

Said and done. Oddly enough, to get to enter one of the technological secrets of the U.S. Army needed only a simple phone call from coast to coast a month after having spent a short time talking to an officer at the Pentagon.

- Ah, Mr. Arias Vega! Of course I remember you! What day and what time you go to Libermore?

There, in a soulless lab, a dedicated officer only gave me all sorts of complicated explanations, drawings and photographs showed me, showed me a huge tube-like and disturbing cinematic fantasies of George Lukas, the famous particle accelerator, which I still do not know what it flooded me, and papers, thinking, surely, that was before a journalist to expose readers to the interested parties after a splendid propaganda explanation of the issue.

This event served to illustrate the trust and to the ingenuity of the American public, able to show its secrets the first undocumented pass by. Nine years later I had the opportunity to see something similar in relation to the private sector.

And then lived on the corner of 36th Street and Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan, and worked with several publications to make a living or, more accurately, to pay me the whim of living in New York. In those days there had been Boeing's merger with McDonald Douglas, forming the largest giant American aviation history. I had just written on the topic for the weekly Money, directed by Marisa Navas with unique talents. He had also offered to El Correo El Pueblo Spanish-Basque, Bilbao, where they called me days later:

- Hey, I said - we would have to raise the issue of aviation macrofusión.

- Well, but the news has occurred a few days ago, so it should be given a more timeless.

- We got it all figured out. It is to do an extensive comparative analysis between the new Boeing and Airbus European pages on Sunday.