Let’s imagine that the so-called “essential journalist”: Dr. Francisco Eugenio Javier de Santa Cruz y Espejo, overwhelmed by the work that would entail being editor, editor, producer, printer and distributor of Quito’s first newspaper, Primicias de la Cultura de Quito, appeared 5 January 1792, he fell into an undisturbed and tireless sleep of 150 continuous years.

Probably, when you wake up around January 1942, you will be deeply surprised by the geopolitical and economic changes of the time: the great world fire, the second. German submarines sink Mexican fuel ships. The British army defeated the Germans and Italians in North Africa. And Ecuador was forced to accept a treaty of peace, friendship and borders with Peru that cleared all the Amazonian territory that belonged to us up to the banks of the Amazon.

Disinformation gives strength to terrorism

But as far as communication is concerned, the father of Ecuadorian journalism will not find major changes in the methods and techniques of the exercise he initiated: newspapers will be the same sheets of paper with endless texts full of opinions and propaganda. Rudimentary forms of printing, not so advanced distribution lines. And using images would be almost zero immobile patches of gray degradation.

Perhaps what is really new would be an abundance of print media with the editorial goal of supporting barricade journalism. You would also learn that in several cities gathered into a country called Ecuador, other not so long-lasting means were created, such as this dream exercise with the Mirror.

Ecuadorian journalism

Now let’s imagine that the journalist of the local newspaper El Tiempo, whom we affectionately called “Asmalito”, fell into that undisturbed sleep at the end of the 90s, but not at the age of 150, but at the age of only 15. If wonder were to be evoked, it would not fit with their understanding of how newspapers were made: papers and inks reduced to a series of digital combinations of zeros and ones; huge industrial warehouses that could fit into a phone’s memory, from which information is sent as it appears. “Asmalito” would feel outside the journalistic world in which he slept for only 15 years.

It is true that journalism is going through dizzying levels of technological transformation, image resignation, transmedia stories that will leave behind times we will not want to remember, those epic days like those of Espejo or Solano. Yet here we are.

Notes on journalistic ethics

As professionals or trainers of budding journalists, we must be not only jealous guardians of the foundations of the profession, but also promoters of this profession adapted to new technological requirements. Guardians of the basic concepts that govern the ethics of the profession. Dissatisfied with the threats of the exercise, disguised as new proposals, self-dedicated to be the place of a worthy profession, but with corrupt practices that eventually expose them. Without respect for that journalism, which has mutated from jealous guardians of power into a government without guardians. (OR)