Those who know me know about the struggle I have waged throughout my personal and professional life in defense of freedom of expression.

And while many who are washing their clothes today enjoyed the enormous public resources that were squandered in the country and complicitly remained silent before the abuses of the supreme power, the author of this column, together with several lawyers, journalists, businessmen and politicians, fought an unequal battle to defend freedom of expression, a struggle that brought me stigmatization and media attacks by those who controlled Ecuador a few years ago.

Disinformation is a ‘sin’

But this commitment to freedom of expression and journalism does not prevent me from identifying, much less condemning, the abuses and excesses committed by the press or perverse appeals to freedom of expression.

For this reason, I cannot do anything else but agree with Pope Francis, when in a recent interview with the Télam news agency he pointed out what, in his opinion, are the four sins of journalism: disinformation, slander, slander and coprophilia.

In a casual conversation, the Pope briefly describes the four “sins”, showing a special concern for coprophilia, which he defines as the love of scandal or the scandalous.

Threats to journalists

I say that I agree because indeed these four behaviors that the Pope indicated are rampant in our society and, unfortunately, more and more strongly, first of all, as a result of the anarchy that reigns on social networks and certain digital portals. Behaviors that harm journalism, because real journalism, traditional, avant-garde, credible, knows and fights.

This does not mean that, due to his human nature, a journalist cannot cause harm to third parties, exceptionally and unintentionally, and as a result of the dizziness of work, perhaps due to lack of workload or due to increasingly unreliable journalistic sources.

But this is not a real problem, because in all trades there are errors or inaccuracies and journalism cannot be an exception.

(…) in all trades there are mistakes or inaccuracies and journalism cannot be an exception.

The Pope looks back at the constant practices, the usual behavior of certain media or wrongly named journalists, dedicated to profit at the expense of worsening the information of citizens and the reputation of their victims on duty.

I say bad names, because in reality they are corrupt, extortionists, manipulators and/or political actors, who hide behind journalism to commit their attacks.

How much damage they cause to society and journalism!

For this reason, it is important that the serious media in the country and we who fight for freedom of expression and the press recognize and separate these enemies of journalism, who intend to use the press and journalism as a shield to commit their crimes and remain unpunished (OR)