The disappearance of Álvaro Prieto was one of these cases that became a magnet for morning television audiences. 18-year-old, engineering student, athlete, goes out partying with some friends and misses the train in Santa Justa-Sevilla. He tries to take another, but is evicted by security services. No ticket, mobile phone without battery, no card, no cash, no charger… Four days, police looking for UME and his dogs… And the body appears live on TVE.
The infotainment is more laundry room and less information and in each live broadcast one more ingredient is added to the chronicle of an announced misfortune. Until Mañaneros, the La1 program, broadcasts some images of the corpse between two wagons. It’s not live stuff. The journalist warns of what he and the cameraman have seen, they have corroborated the coincidence of the clothes with the young man’s friends and a convenient zoom guides us to the macabre find: “I don’t know how to explain this”, “calm”, they tell him ; “we saw something suspicious…, “you will see it right now”, “I want you to observe it”…
Jaime Cantizano’s face reveals journalistic “barbarity” and social networks certify it. Álvaro Prieto heads all the trends in Spain, leaving behind Israel and Hamas. And after the name of the victim, the punishment on RTVE: “Not everything is worth it”, “delete it” are trending topics. Álvaro Prieto drags users and their algorithms towards other tragic events followed on TV just as tragic: “Alcàsser” – “we learned nothing from Alcàsser” – or “Marta del Castillo”.
Paco Lobatón makes his experience available to the avid audience of Quién sabe dónde. “The reproduction of the images broadcast by TVE (…) must be stopped”. Three days ago, the journalist presented to the Audiovisual Council of Andalusia a guide to approach cases like that of Álvaro with rigor, the quality of information and respect for the rights of missing persons and their relatives. Not at all
Cantizano is the face of an apology: “The images should never have been broadcast”, they were removed from the digital broadcast and made available to the judicial police. But it’s too late. “The evil is as enormous as it is absurd,” tweets Gabriel Rufián. The deontological code of RTVE is explicit: it is necessary to “harmonize informational interests with the obligation to avoid unnecessary pain for both victims and relatives”; “reproducing high-impact images solely for their visual value is not justified”; “the close-ups of corpses are always unnecessary”… Not everything is worth it, not everything is worth it, not everything is worth it…