Communicative Surrealism
Every time I've contacted the communications offices of institutions, I've encountered situations that seem surreal, but which we journalists have normalized.
To begin with, the lack of response. Obtaining data or information, however irrelevant, is a heroic act. Requests must be made weeks in advance. Sometimes it seems as if one has to painstakingly craft the responses and copy them in Gothic calligraphy onto parchment. Perhaps the reader thinks they could make some progress in the age of AI, where simply pressing a button is enough to receive a deluge of data. How wrong they are... The mechanisms of opacity need a long time to exhaust the patience of those seeking information, who often give up.
Furthermore, the communications offices of any institution dedicate themselves to burying the media under tons of irrelevant information. I would say useless, but I won't. For example, Cort reported this Friday that the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, presented the April Fair. My congratulations on this presentation, which I'm sure was a memorable one. The Consell de Mallorca reported on March 7th that it had made a floral offering in honor of its patron saint, Saint John of God, on the occasion of Firefighters' Day. An event that deserves to be publicized. And the Govern reported on the 11th that 100 people had attended a round table discussion organized by IB Dona.
The media chooses what to publish and what not to, of course. But we also watch with astonishment this deluge of information sent to us while we await answers to the many questions we ask institutions, questions that often remain unanswered, lost in a parallel and entirely unknown dimension.
Citizens should understand that if we don't report on a particular topic, it's not out of laziness, but because our efforts to obtain the information haven't yielded the results we would like. Because communications offices have ceased to be a service for journalists and function more as a bottleneck. When we request to speak with an official related to the topic we want to discuss, they ask us to specify the exact questions, a practice that is completely counterproductive to the right to information. Answers shouldn't be prepared before the questions are even asked.