Catalina de Erauso | The «plan ZEN» (Zona Especial Norte)
The style books are, by and large, glossaries of grammatical or lexical errors that are frequently found amongst journalists as well as a wide range of guidelines for writing news. Spanish mass media corporations whose business is to write and sell news have compiled a range of such books. At times where fake news or hoaxes spread at lightning speed, it is sensible to scrutinize these manuals to learn more about what recommendations publishers make to their editors. Everything that has to do with the story at hand must be adjusted to the truth and coincides almost 100% with the deontological code of journalism. All the books reviewed emphasize on this issue. They also make a distinction between facts and opinions. No worries, everything as it should be until now. However, there are striking differences between what is information and newsworthy in the books under scrutiny. And, given that the sewers of journalism have been uncovered in Spain, it is urgent to review some of the aspects that style books deal with. Note that it has been widely reported in the past months that journalists are being paid by the Ministry of Interior to publish certain “news” and silence others.
What was the Plan ZEN?
At this point, we need to go back a couple of decades in the history of Spain, more precisely to the beginning of the eighties of the last century. The story begins in the Ministry of Interior where the Plan ZEN (Zona Especial Norte) was designed, developed and launched. Due to this fact, I wonder whether there is a direct or, perhaps, an indirect link between this plan and parts of the style books journalists working for mass media corporations in Spain have to adhere to.
But what was the ZEN plan about? The ZEN plan, or in other words the “northern special zone”, is according to Jonathan Martínez. “a police manual presented in 1983 by the Felipe González´ government. It was designed by the intelligence services and inspired by counterinsurgency practices of Plan Condor in the United States during the Cold War. With the excuse of counteracting the different armed groups that operated in the Basque Country at that time, the Interior Minister, José Barrionuevo, established a special regime in our territory that includes various forms of propaganda and mass control”. Among the many issues addressed by the Ministry’s plan, the psychological action to fight against terrorism in an exhaustive manner is noteworthy. At this point, some quotes are revealing. On page 119, it is recommended «to constantly repeat the underlying idea: the police suffer acts of violence because it represents an obstacle for those who seek to forcefully impose a system contrary to the Basque cultural tradition and respect for the freedom and rights of others«. And what matters here is the word «repeat». It means that both the employees of the Ministry of Interior and, indirectly, the media were encouraged to use the tactic of the repetition of certain slogans to foster rejection and form opinion in the citizenship. Unfortunately, it was not only used against terrorism but mainly for criminalizing civil associations that had nothing to do with it.
Let us go deeper into this matter. In order for official communications issued by the Ministry of Interior to impact in the public opinion, it does not suffice to hold a press conference in a room of that institution and report on it once. It is necessary that the media pick upon this news, publish and repeat them with a certain regularity. And here the concept news comes across. What is news? Definitions in the dictionaries consulted agree on one point: news is information of interest to readers. If facts and the same interpretations -as was suggested by the Ministry- are repeated without adding any substantial novelties over and over again, it is no longer news. It is, perhaps, slogans or propaganda, or intoxication or disinformation in the worst case. But, how come that publishing houses adhere to this recommendation if journalism is the fourth power, whose main task is the one of controlling political action? Here is where the economic factor comes into play. The newspapers income had been in decline for years because of readership lost. The Ministry in the 80ies devises a plan to invite publishing houses to publish news of a certain ideological tendency with the objective of
“Promoting or rewarding the periodic publication in the Basque-Navarran newspapers focusing on economic, energy benefits, etc. that they (Basques) receive from other people of Spain and the common historical and cultural facts. ”
In other words, Spanish citizens and in particular Basques should be convinced about the fact that they were getting more from Spain than they were paying via taxes to support the public spending. If one bothers to look at papers of the time, he or she will come to the conclusion that Basques were getting huge benefits from Spain, which is simply not true.
The mass media
Alongside with the crisis prompted by the free digital media´s birth, newspapers lost even more readers on printed newspapers, a non-trivial matter for the survival of mass media that will be dealt with below. At this point it suffices to highlight the words rewarding the periodic publication. How was that service rewarded? Perhaps, placing institutional advertisements in the newspapers or in nice envelopes in B (black money)? If we keep this recommendation issued by the Ministry in mind, we need to ask ourselves how many times we have read and heard in parliamentary debates that the Basques have economic privileges due to the Economic Agreement with Spain (cupo). Moreover, we should try to remember how often we have seen newspapers quote such slogans. And more importantly, how many times journalists have elaborated on those ideas with distorted data and fake figures with manipulated scales. Both parliamentarians and so-called journalists have repeated those slogans ad nauseam. If a Spanish citizen is asked which people in Spain are unsupportive, he or she would almost certainly say that the Basque Country is the richest one and is not solidary at all. That is the consequence of repeating slogans for decades. If Basque politicians are asked, they will tell us that the Basque Country is not unsupportive. On the contrary, the Basques have been paying more than they should since the Gernika Statute (1980) was passed in the Parliament. That is, these slogans with distorted data were repeated both in the media as well as in public debates and are part of the shared knowledge of ordinary citizens who cannot be bothered about checking facts. In addition to the repetition, the ZEN plan suggests to
«Subsidize a good brochure on» The truth about the new ETA «with statements by Basque leaders».
If we go back some 4 decades again, we will realize that certain people hitherto unknown to the majority of citizens were constantly interviewed in certain newspapers and public televisions. By the continuous repetition of those interviews with broadly the same content, the mentioned people became like celebrities so that even the least educated citizens know their faces. They did not have much information to provide, nor did their talks ooze deep reflections based on rigorous data, but what they claimed coincided 100% with the two postulates of the Z.E.N plan that were just mentioned: repeat for subsidies. If we stop at the word «subsidize», it is clear that the Ministry had funds to pay newspapers in order for them to spread certain slogans and pieces of information. As pieces of information came from sources in the Ministry, the journalists or newspapers did not have to verify the veracity of those filtrations. But not everything was publishing news. The Z.E.N plan also advises «hindering and preventing the publication of (sic) news that serve as publicity for terrorists.» This quote makes it clear that the psychological action was to repeat certain news and hide, silence or make others invisible. It is nothing new in human´s behaviour, the new thing, at least in Spain, is that the Ministry of Interior advices to do so, by suggesting to journalists which information to broadcast and which one to silence. It is something that was already practiced in Hitler’s Germany with great success. It was called Göbbels´ decalogue.
But is there any link between the ZEN plan and the style books? If we now analyze some of the recommendations of the publishing houses to their journalists, specifically how to write news that have to do with terrorism, we find the following guidelie in the VOCENTO Style Book on page 23 and section 1.2. 13
“The news of terrorist actions must be offered with the same accuracy as the others, although noting that their despicable motivation gives them in any case relevant transcendence, which must be measured more by the intentionality of the terrorist than by the real consequences of the events reported. In the information on terrorist events, the journalist is not a neutral mediator, but must be considered an attacked party. ”
For Vocento, the journalist is not a neutral mediator and must feel like an attacked party. If this is so, it is clear that Vocento invites its journalists to write news, giving free rein to opinion and to speculate on the terrorist’s intentions and to judge these acts as he pleases. If the journalist embraces this postulate, he or she abandons objectivity. Note that if you do not adhere to that maxim, you may be fired. And with the following advice from the newspaper El Mundo, the editor is endowed with weapons that target the negative emotions. The newspaper EL MUNDO´s style book advises the following technique for making entries and headlines:
“Wherever possible, EL MUNDO prefers an entry that contains an element of interpretation (rather than opinion) and thus gives an added dimension to the story. The introduction of the «terrorist» element is what adds interpretive value to the entry. Some purists would prefer that it was not the journalist, but a source, with its statements in quotation marks, that introduced elements of interpretation. But this technique is increasingly accepted or even encouraged.”
Those who read the news entirely with some regularity know that headlines may be misleading. How many times has a headline caught our attention and after reading the article we discovered that it had nothing to do with its content! In the era of twitter in which 140-character readers proliferate, it is clear that the headline has to have a hook. And publishers know very well that many readers only read headlines and have already formed an opinion. The data dealt with in the article matters little. For this reason, many newspapers in Spain are today a jumble of headlines with little information in the articles they head. But let’s see how the fallacy works. The adjective terrorist captures the reader’s attention. With just that adjective repeated thousands of times, the reader reinforces an opinion that he or she already had on the subject in question. Noam Chomsky explains it very well: “Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique to cause a short circuit in rational analysis, and finally to the critical sense of individuals. On the other hand, the use of the emotional register allows opening the access door to the unconscious to implant or graft ideas, desires, fears and fears, compulsions, or induce behaviors… ”. With the careful choice of verbs, nouns and adjectives, the emotional part of the individual can be anchored both to trigger fears as well as joy and ecstasy. It gives for dozens of doctoral theses if news is analyzed in which negative emotional language is used. It would not surprise us that certain topics are always treated from the pink prism. Whoever reads Hello can write a PHD thesis on the royal wardrobe and the cloying words used to describe it. It is possible that, in either case, the news contains truthful information, but the use of well-chosen qualifying adjectives clouds the perspective of the facts. Compare the nouns casa» house» and casoplón «huge house«,Bolivarian communism and libertarian ideology to refer to left-wing parties. In fact, the reader should be able to comment quickly. The more viscera, the better. Long live the bile!
Turning now to the ZEN plan and the link with the publishing houses, it has become clear that the Ministry of the Interior has drawn up guidelines on how to report on official statements to the officials who write them, but the publishing houses out of negligence or with intent have adopted some of its guidelines in his style books, repeating and hiding. It is known that the ethical code of journalism obliges journalists not to reveal the origin of their sources. This protects, for example, a whistleblower. If the information is leaked by an institution, just give the name of the institution. Nothing else. As it is an official information, it has truth rank and should not be verified. «According to sources from the Ministry of the Interior» is a phrase that we have read and heard countless times. Furthermore, the constant repetition of certain phrases is already part of the journalistic subculture of Spain. They are not even news because their exacerbated repetition makes them mere slogans. Let us recall how many times the media has dusted off issues related to ETA violence. The effort to remember ETA’s violence and forget the violence caused by terrorist organizations promoted and financed or well tolerated by the Interior Ministry is striking. Nobody remembers any more about the fascist terrorist groups Dril, GAE, GAL, ATE, BVE, TripleA, Cristo Rey, Green Branch, or others from the left and the like who carried out countless attacks murdering almost 200 people in the Basque Country and raping many women. This is perhaps so because the memory of this terrorism is not subsidized by the Ministry or does fit in the the plans of those who control the media. Note that the former policeman Villarejo is now in prison for having created and managed a net of employees in the Ministry of Interior to control and record politicians, in order to use those recordings to blackmail the mentioned politicians. He made that illegal job for more than three decades.
It would be interesting to investigate the use of certain adjectives such as etarra, proetarra, filoetarra, violent, Bolivarian and the nouns with which they were combined as well as to whom those adjectives were addressed. Their choice does not seem accidental, rather it seems to obey a plan devised by some hidden black hand that pulls the strings.
As readers, we must ask ourselves if it is worth paying to read certain newspapers in print or digital that misinform, intoxicate and disseminate hoaxes over and over again. Regarding the latter, it is well known that certain journalists and newspapers in Spain have been convicted of repeatedly printing hoaxes against left wing politicians. As newspaper sales are steadily decreasing, I wonder how some mass media manage to pay the huge fines to which they are sentenced over and over again. Maybe, the Ministry of Interior could provide an answer. It is surprising that Eduardo Inda is condemned again and again for divulging hoaxes and his newspaper has not suffered any economic drawback. It is more striking that certain media continue to invite him to talk-shows that are broadcasted in prime time. What Inda and others of his rope do is to repeat slogans and false accusations, even after courts have convicted them. This is precisely, what the Plan ZEN advised to do against ETA. But ETA dissolved 6 years ago and no terrorist attacs have been perpertrated for more than 12 years. Theoretically, the psychological action to fight ETA insurgents should have been acquitted long ago. My impression is that the same tactics are now being used against emergent political parties of the left spectrum. Hence, it is necessary to find out if the journalists involved in these dirty campaigns do it in collaboration with the Ministry of the Interior because there is some evidence that the psychological warfare referred to in Plan Z.E.N was never abandoned in the Ministry of Interior of Spain. It looks like as if it has just chosen new targets.
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