How much would you be willing to pay for The Truth?

If you conduct a survey and ask how important music is to citizens, you will probably receive passionate responses and end up with the general impression that music is very important to many people. In fact, some will assure you that music accompanies them all day long, and others will tell you directly that they could not live without it. Money is invested by these same people in a cultural asset that is so important to them, whether in physical or digital format, concert tickets, or a subscription to some social media service. streaming, you'll probably pick up a fair number of uncomfortable expressions like 'ehhhh', 'uhhhh' and even the occasional 'ahhhh'.

I don't think the money you spend on music should be the sole measure of your passion, but this incongruity has always struck me because I think it reveals something very typical of our times, if only in how we consume, which is, in general, what tells us what is blind, and without reflecting on priorities.

The phenomenon, in fact, is not exclusive to music, but with music it is more obvious than in other fields because, it is a fact, you can enjoy music whenever you want without having to pay absolutely anything and that makes the act of paying voluntary, an act that many people don't even consider.

Perhaps where this phenomenon is most painful is in information, especially in the case of the press: again, if you conduct a street survey, most people will tell you that quality information is one of the pillars of democracy, an indispensable asset for understanding the world we live in, and that they try to be well-informed. They will also probably let you know that, in general, they think journalists are almost all incompetent. I can only partially refute that statement (I've always wondered how many people would still be alive if doctors acted with the same disdain with which some editors do their jobs). But, again, and returning to the survey: how much do people spend to contribute to supporting quality press?

With online newspapers, estimates suggest that 20% of readers are paying. In 2004, paper newspapers sold more than 4 million copies a day. In 2014, they had dropped by almost half. Currently, they don't even reach 800,000. The Spanish population is slightly over 49 million. This means that, out of every 100 people, only two buy print media. The other 98 million Spaniards also get their information, of course. There's TV, radio, and, above all, social media.

And this is where we must keep in mind the maxim of economics in the internet age: if you're not paying for a product, it's because you're not the customer, you're the product. Or, to put it more emphatically: you're not receiving a service, you're the service someone offers to someone else.

Again, I don't think having access to accurate information should be an economic issue: culture and information should be a right, not a privilege. But I also think there's an inconsistency here that betrays something of that historical moment and, above all, explains the precariousness of labor in both sectors. A precariousness that, in the case of the press, means the near disappearance of that slow, in-depth journalism that allowed you to understand what was happening beyond the headlines. We've never received so much information. It's a constant bombardment. But how much of that information do we really understand? And how much would we be willing to pay to do it? Here's the theoretical answer. The real answer, at this point, is much less than what we're willing to pay to watch the latest series, buy a new pair of sneakers, or have a state-of-the-art phone to take our best selfies. A matter of priorities, of course.