History and The World

31 March 2004. Inspired by .

Someone I'm assured is a distinguished Spanish columnist attacked my Guardian piece yesterday in El Mundo, though I only found out this morning. Though I don't normally bother with this, I thought a reply might be good practice for my Spanish. If you click MORE at the bottom, you'll get the English translation both of his piece and my reply.

For background, here's the original piece and, after free registration, here in Spanish is his.


Una repuesta a Víctor de La Serna, que escribió su columna en El Mundo de ayer.

(NB como todo el contenido de mi página, éstas son mis opiniones personales y no desde The Guardian ni otra publicación)

Es interesante lo que usted ha escrito, y estoy muy orgulloso por haber ganado un premio tan fuerte como "la reescritura histórica de la semana". Pero me veo obligado a rechazarlo porque no lo merezco.

El principal problema se produjo con las palabras de Ignacio Escolar, un periodista que entrevisté sobre lo que pasó el día 13-M en Madrid. Parece que nos equivocamos - las manifestaciones salieron en cadena Ser y en el canal digital CNN+, y probablemente más temprano de lo que dijo el. Sr. Escolar, que ya se ha disculpado aquí. Yo también quiero añadir mis disculpas sobre algún dato incorrecto que contenía mi artículo.

Pero una cosa muy distinta es afirmar que, lógicamente, todo mi artículo y la idea de espontaneidad de las manifestaciones fueron incorrectos también. Pero no lo es.

Aun si hubiera salido por todos los medios tradicionales, las noticias necesitan ser relevantes para ser retransmitidas. Ésta fue una manifestación convocado en un tiempo muy muy corto - y para hacer algo así tan rápido, y así de efectivo, es impresionante y no hubiera podido pasar antes de nuestro nivel de tecnología actual.

No soy un periodista político. Mi artículo sobre lo que pasó fue incluido en el suplemento de tecnología. Y lo que me interesó fue la manera de convocar a la gente, al margen de la política.

No creo que todo que pasó fuera solo gracias a tecnología. Los SMS y emails no cambiaron la resultad de las elecciones. Como dije en mi artículo, después que el candidato a la presidencia por el PP apareciera por la televisión para intentar disolver las manifestaciones, el número de manifestantes creció, y quizás, solo quizás, tuvieron un efecto sobre el resultado final de las elecciones. "Nadie sabe el efecto," dijo Ignacio Escolar. Y así es.

Pero sigo creyendo que el primer impacto fue gracias a emails y teléfonos móviles. Pero, hay una cosa más que no entiendo. En la página de El Mundo - el periódico del Sr Serna - hay un articulo aqui que dice "más de 5.000 personas que se congregaron de forma espontánea en forma de protesta a las puertas de la sede del PP en Madrid" y "Según algunos de los asistentes, la manifestación fue convocada por distintos movimientos sociales vía SMS, foros de internet y mediante el boca a boca". Usted habla en su articulo sobre "el mito de la espontaneidad" - este me parece un poco extraño.


La verdadera historia existe como una mezcla de muchos puntos de vista. Podemos no estar de acuerdo, sin que eso signifique ni que seamos unos mentirosos ni reescritores de historia. Solo estamos intentando hacer nuesto trabajo de la mejor manera posible.

Y por eso, arrepentido, me veo obligado a devolver su premio.

Un saludo

A.

The original piece:

That which Juan Luis Cebrian calls "the lost honour of Jose Maria Aznar" (those big headlines, very literary those) continues to be rubbed in the dirt, and not only by the Prisa group [left-leaning media group that publishes El Pais and owns the Ser and the digital Spanish Canal Plus TV chains] but also by important newspapers the world over. And, in a return to the old practices created by the dictats of the USSR, they continue rewriting history following [the bombings of] March 11th.

The winner of Rewriter of History of the Week goes this time to Andrew Losowsky, of The Guardian, who interviewed another journalist - this time a Spaniard - called Ignacio Escolar, and without fear of contradiction, printed the following assertion: "The first protest in Madrid on Saturday 13th did not appear on a single traditional media channel until 7.30pm." That proved the thesis of Escolar and the other experts: that the emails and SMS messages were enough to mobilise the demonstrations against the PP.

Question: Are, for Losowsky and Escolar, Ser TV and CNN+, "traditional media channels"? The first showed the calls for a demonstration from the start of the afternoon and the second showed them live from 6pm. But the rewriting of History will now contain the myth of spontaneity...

[The piece goes on to criticise the Financial Times for claiming that the EU had criticised Spain's handling of the aftermath of the bombings (with the sign-off "great Anglo Saxon journalism") and then the Wall Street Journal who spoke to two anti-government Spaniards without quoting a conservative commentator.]

It ends with "There wasn't any media manipulation? Oh, please! What a fat lie!"

Here is my reply:


A reply to Victor de la Serna, who wrote about me in his column in El Mundo yesterday.

(NB as with all of my page, these are my personal opinions and not those of the Guardian or any other publication)

It's interesting what you've written and I'm very proud to win such a prize as "Rewriter of history of the week". But I'm afraid that I'll have to refuse it, because I really don't deserve it.

The first problem you have is with the words of Ignacio Escolar, a journalist who I interviewed about what happened on the 13th March in Madrid. It seems that we were mistaken about one fact - that the demonstrations were in fact shown on the Ser channel and on digital TV as well, probably earlier than Ignacio said. He's already apologised for that lapse here and I would like to add my apologies for that as well.

But to claim that, therefore, all of my article and its claims about the spontaneity of the protests were incorrect as well, is not a reasonable supposition to make.

Even if the protests had gone out on all the traditional channels, news needs something to report on. And there is little doubt that these were protests created in a very short time - and to build something of this size and effect at such speed was extremely impressive. It simply could not have happened without our current level of technology.

I am not a political journalist. My article was about what happened featured in the technology supplement of The Guardian. And I am interested in the way in which the people came together, not the politics of it.

I don't believe that everything that happened was only thanks to SMS and email. They didn't change the result of the election alone. As I said in my article, after the PP appeared on the TV to condemn the protests, the numbers of marchers grew and maybe, just maybe, it had an effect on the election result. "No-one knows the effect," said Ignacio in my piece. That's how it was.

But I still believe that the ball started rolling thanks to emails and mobile phones.

One other thing I don't quite understand: in El Mundo's archive - the employer of Snr Serna - there is an article here that says that "more than 5000 people came together in a spontaneous protest outside the PP headquarters," and "According to some of those there, the protest was created by different social movements via SMS, internet forums and word-of-mouth." For you to now talk of "the myth of spontaneity" seems a little inconsistent.

True history exists only as a combination of points of view. We may not be in agreement, but that doesn't mean that either you or I are liars or rewriters of history. We're both just doing our jobs as best we can.

Which is why, regretfully, I will have to return your gracious award.

Yours

A.