Esther Palomera proposes "prohibiting public funding" to media outlets that spread hoaxes: "We have a social responsibility"

Journalist Esther Palomera has defended in Hora 25 the need to toughen measures against disinformation and has proposed withdrawing public funding from those media outlets that spread hoaxes. During the debate, she also focused on the role of social media and large digital platforms as one of the main challenges to curb this phenomenon.

Palomera has valued the proposal of a scientist to provisionally suspend from their activity politicians who spread false information, although she has warned that the problem goes further. "The scientist's proposal to provisionally suspend from their activity politicians who spread hoaxes is very admirable, but there is a bigger problem, and that is social media and platforms," she pointed out, recalling that the European Union is already working on this matter, although she has acknowledged that it is an area "absolutely inscrutable".

In relation to the media, the journalist has defended the specific measure of "prohibiting public funding for those media or pseudo-media that spread hoaxes, because they do exist". Furthermore, she has assured that "the vast majority of them, moreover, are mostly financed with public money", which is why she considers that preventing them from accessing these resources would be an effective tool to combat disinformation.

Palomera has differentiated between errors inherent to journalistic practice and the deliberate dissemination of false information. "We all make informational errors in journalism, but one thing is an error and another is the dissemination of an intentional or unintentional hoax," she stated. In that sense, she has vindicated the social function of journalism by recalling that "media outlets are here to meet society's information demands" and has concluded that this proposal "should be a measure to study".