José Pablo López vindicates respect and empathy, condemning the cruelty on social media in the face of television cancellations: "Less digital cruelty"

José Pablo López has shared a reflection on the way social media reacts to the cancellation of audiovisual programs and projects. The president of RTVE has especially questioned the displays of joy and mockery that sometimes accompany the professional failure of other colleagues in the industry.

“Seeing how social media cruelly celebrates the cancellation of a program or a project, whether its own or a competitor's, strikes me as stark,” begins the message published by López on X. The executive acknowledges that this is a common situation in the sector and assures that he himself has experienced these types of circumstances firsthand.

For López, risk and error are an inevitable part of creative work. “In this market, risk is constant and making mistakes is common; it is an intrinsic variable to creativity. Creating demands courage, time, and effort,” he points out.

The president of RTVE also focuses on the people who work behind the cameras and who can be affected by the cancellation of a format. In this sense, he recalls that a television program “is never just a number on the audience meter,” since behind each production there are months of work and professionals from different fields.

“Technicians, scriptwriters, producers, and many other professions” are part of the teams that make each project possible, notes López, who believes that the lack of empathy in the face of a professional setback ends up dehumanizing both the profession and society.

“Less digital cruelty”

The reflection by the head of RTVE comes at a time marked by online conversations about various television cancellations and, especially, by the reactions generated after the announcement of the end of El show de Paz, on Telecinco. Although López does not directly mention Paz Padilla or the program, his message temporally coincides with the controversy.

López differentiates between criticism and cruelty towards those who have participated in a project. "Destroying from the anonymity of a screen takes a few seconds," he states before showing his "respect" for those who work every day in the audiovisual industry, regardless of the channel they work for.

His message concludes with a direct request: "Less digital cruelty." And he adds a claim about how to analyze television failures: "It's not being overly good: criticism is not at odds with humanity."