Disinformation is a global phenomenon, but credulity is actually quite idiosyncratic and, therefore, quite local: it depends on territories and their cultures. And it may be surprising, but it seems that we are rather credulous compared to other parts of the world. According to Ipsos Global Advisor, which analyzes the rise of the fake news phenomenon worldwide, Spaniards rank fifth in the global ranking when it comes to falling for fake news. Who tops the list? Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Peru. Specifically, according to the Ipsos Global Advisor survey conducted in 26 countries, 57% of the Spanish population admits to having once believed a fake news story to be true. And this, in reality, is not the worst part; rather, the fact of knowing that we are continuously exposed to fake news or confusing or manipulated information (which accounts for 62% of content published on the Internet) makes us eventually give up on knowing what is true and what is not. Suspicion towards an image, a video, or information we read has become a more common habit than desirable, and trust a form of daily survival. Have we lost our critical capacity? According to journalist Gabriel Gatehouse, only a society that regains confidence in its critical capacity can avoid the collapse of public debate. And the battle is not just political: it is, above all, cultural and symbolic. It is a battle for meaning. The writer Míriam Cano, in Es mengen els gats —a highly recommended book for the AVE trip from Barcelona to Madrid, by the way—, reminds us that "defending the truth is not only about telling the truth, but about creating the necessary conditions for it to be heard and, hopefully, integrated". And this is where journalism becomes more than a profession: it becomes democratic infrastructure. The question is not just knowing what is happening, but who is telling us and with what intention. Because without trust in those who inform, there is no trust in our own capacity to understand the world.
We don't want to live scared, thinking that everything is going to hell. In the end, a scared society is a society more willing to give up freedoms in exchange for security. That's why the narrative matters. And that's also why how it is built and from where it is built matters.
And beware, doing positive journalism is not synonymous with whitewashing any reality or sugarcoating it. It is taking on the responsibility of building a narrative capable of explaining discomfort without amplifying it, of transforming uncertainty into understanding, fear into connection, turbulence into ecosystems that are understood. It is recovering the language of hope and trust without renouncing rigor.
And today we celebrate that this space of Good News and True Stories that we nurture in Barcelona with so much care and dedication is also multiplying in another European capital like Madrid. Yesterday we celebrated that the wake of The New Barcelona Post is growing and, furthermore, it is doing so by taking its own form, The New Madrid Post, with a company promoted by BEKANE Media and The Good News Magazine. As one of its thinkers and promoters, the architect Fernando Caballero, well says, "we live in the era of cities. The 21st century is the time of metropolises."