Talking about freedom of expression is the first guarantee of its existence and a good way to ward off censorship. But having a good time at the bar doesn’t mean that nonsense will get coverage in the mainstream media. From an optimistic point of view, it can be assumed that it will be society, as it has always done, that will impose limits on those ideas that limit freedoms and that the media will help promote the changes in the collective Raising awareness that do this will make the world a better place. “Let us not give up the protest or the demand, because this is the fine drop that will change social behavior,” said the former director of EL PAÍS, Javier Moreno, this Saturday at the International Book Fair in Oaxaca, where about the Freedom was spoken of the expression.
The advance of the far right everywhere has been the backbone of a debate that is testing democracy in half the world, the fine line between protecting minorities at the expense of restricting the speech of those who limit their rights or restrict freedom of expression want the risk of violating sensitivities or exceeding agreed limit values. “Sometimes you have to give freedom of expression more space and be a little less sensitive. “There are things that are published that irritate us, that we don’t want to read, but the risk is to mutilate freedom of expression, which is ultimately freedom of thought,” said Moreno, convinced of what had already caught the ears years ago who attacked the majority, sexist jokes, homophobic humor and animal cruelty were the order of the day. But expressing hate does not mean giving up: “What is democratically tolerated must be made unacceptable.” There are the microphones and the platforms where you can say what you want, even if it is terrible, but I will Remind people who you are and what you do and say before I ban or silence you. I think it’s like that, everyone from their own ditch. “Societies are changing for the better,” Moreno said.
The journalist, twice director of EL PAÍS and now head of the newspaper’s journalism school, has warned of the danger of “blaming people who voted wrong and telling them that they voted wrong” just because they voted the wrong person voted ballot papers. That’s how our ideas went. But we must not give up “informing readers, citizens, that we will always be vigilant about the boundaries that must not be crossed.” After all, a good newspaper is a conversation.” “We can’t do the extreme right “Ignore them, but put them in the spotlight.” Moreno advocates pouring tons of journalism on this ideological phenomenon that is just around the corner in countries like Argentina or has already passed over them, as in Italy.
Fleeing the Manichaeism of good and evil, but looking for boundaries that should not be crossed in the interest of a coexistence that avoids barbarism, the conference led by the linguist and writer Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil compared the attacks that a government, political class or the churches, all power actors with which they hurt minorities. “The first can be humor or art to desacralize the word of the powerful, the second, attacking those who have no power, is aggression,” concluded the participants of the lecture. “Censorship is always an act of power,” Aguilar said.
In any case, Moreno advocated putting yourself in the position of the opposite, in the position of those “who want to curtail rights and make us suffer, and think about what motivates them, what drives them, the risk is not there.” understand what is happening. “There is no other choice but to discuss and convince citizens, there is no other option,” Moreno said. “Part of the problem is not understanding that the risk is always to censor, and not understanding that there are values that are in conflict and that you have to know how to deal with them.” I trust in people’s ability to rationalize.”
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