Erosion of Truth | Erosión de la Verdad

By Renzo Abruzzese, El Deber:

Media violence and state ideology

A couple of decades ago, sitting down to watch the news was truly an intellectual act; social, cultural, political, and societal realities appeared on television screens, in oral and written press, in an organized, comprehensive, and mostly objective manner, with ethical standards that rarely hurt the sensibilities of the audience. There was a sense that one still controlled their environment. What was known as “crime chronicles” aired in the “late-night,” meaning in the hours after midnight until dawn when morning news programs in indigenous languages and native programs began. Today, it is very difficult to get a general overview of the country; television news programming emits such a quantity of violent news that at times I feel I will end up spattered with blood. The coverage of national or local political news is partial, generally brief, lacking context, and consequently, lacks objectivity and is of poor quality.

Probably, almost 20 years of a regime aimed at suppressing freedom of the press and expression manifest in this way today. In fact, all those media outlets that defended their sources and their own opinions ended up closing down. An infinite succession of tricks and traps ended up suffocating institutions. However, despite this being evident, we should not lose sight of the fact that one of the most valuable citizen rights in modernity is the right to be informed. Limiting, curtailing, or manipulating that right, as the MAS (Movement for Socialism) governments do, is characteristic of authoritarian regimes that hate different thinking and are terrified of the truth.

Nevertheless, all of this is part of the phenomenon of the progressive degradation of all dimensions of national reality. Political discourse, the arts, science, public opinion, all have degraded, and the reign of the simplistic has invaded all spaces of national reality. In fact, everything has had to pay tribute to the failed attempt to build a state and a native national culture that never expressed the spirit of the nation, let alone the republican character we cultivate. This failed attempt shows its failure to date in all orders of historical reality and translates into violence, blood, criminality, and systematic disinformation.

It is also possible that all of this is a reflection of a country where, like never before, crime, assassination, drug trafficking, assault, robbery, and the most obtuse forms of corruption have taken hold of reality. Thus, we pay with blood and compound interest the racist ambitions of the MAS and the mediocrity of its most prominent leaders.

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