Los modernos alcahuetes mediáticos

Abstract

In the short space of ten years, the Spanish television has shot straight from only 1 to 17 programs devoted to talk about the private life of all kinds of celebrities. These “chitchat” and gossip shows have invaded primetime spaces with the largest audiences, and generate very high screen measurement levels. In the eyes of public opinion, this phenomenon is further discrediting the prestige of a profession: journalism, which anyway, as it is, has already won many detractors. As a formula to palliate this problem, its has been suggested that, from now on, the so-called “journalists of the heart” are euphemistically mentioned as “popular communicators”; or - with no euphemisms at all and in a more pure language, with the most proper terms: gossipmongers, meddlers, or muckrakers.

En diez años, la televisión española ha pasado de uno a 17 programas dedicados a hablar sobre la vida privada de personajes famosos. Los programas de “cotilleo” o chismes, ocupan las franjas de mayor audiencia y, además, generan cotas de pantallas muy elevadas. El fenómeno desprestigia ante la opinión pública una profesión: la periodística, que ya de por sí tiene muchos detractores. Como fórmula para paliar este problema se propone que a los, hasta ahora, periodistas del “corazón” se les denomine eufemísticamente “comunicadores populares” o, sin eufemismo y usando mejor el idioma: cotillas, alcahuetes o correveidiles.