A minor but clearly verifiable fact difference upset me today.
(For my Belgian buddies especially, please read. I know it's long, but honestly, it matters. Alsjeblieft, ok?)
One of my ways of seeking balance, if not impartiality in my news is to take a look at the way stories are reported across several languages as well as several regions. Unfortunately El Punt Avui only allows five free stories per month, and having looked at a couple I decided that it wasn't worth a paywall, but I have been checking La Vanguardia as a Barcelona based paper, albeit a Castilian language one. More to the point, in addition to the (I am assured very biased) El País in Madrid, I've been looking at the online UK edition of the Guardian, at the New York Times, and the Flemish paper De Morgen with some regularity, to see how they're following the same stories. If it's something I'm really curious about, I will also check Le Monde. That was how I ran across a piece of reporting which, while trivial in itself, struck me as really egregious.
Of all the papers I've looked at, De Morgen is the only one that has been enthusiastically cheering on Catalan independence. (The Guardian are torn between a romantic Orwell image and the horrific reality of Brexit, and have actually been divided in their coverage. The others have all pretty much done variants on "this is nuts.") A Belgian friend of mine gleefully emailed me a few weeks ago to say that the Belgian prime minister had "taken a stand" in favor of the Catalans, and that he considered Puigdemont to be "a statesman." I was not diplomatic in my reply, but I must say that after today I understand why a Flemish person might be misled into thinking that.
Saturday's De Morgen ran a front page story "Spaanse vice-premier Soraya Sanz de Santamaría nu formeel aan de macht in Catalonië." (I'm linking to all the stories here, because I want to be careful about attribution. Apologies if the links are bad or behind paywalls after a couple of days.) The authorship was listed as the ANP Belga Volkskrant, in other words, a Dutch-language wire service, that probably went to most Dutch language papers. The headline (for those who can't figure out the Dutch) is "Spanish vice-premier Soraya Sanz de Santamaría now formally in power in Catalonia" and the story is mostly about that. However, it contains the following phrases:
In English:“De Catalaanse regeringsleider Carles Puigdemont en zijn ministers staat mogelijk arrestatie te wachten wegens rebellie. Volgens de BBC heeft Puigdemont zijn vrouw en dochters het land uitgestuurd, om te voorkomen dat ze betrokken raken bij een eventuele escalatie van de politieke strijd.”
The leader of the Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont and his ministers are probably awaiting arrest for rebellion. According to the BBC, Puigdemont has sent his wife and daughters out of the country to prevent them from becoming involved in an eventual escalation of political fighting.
On the same day, El País ran a story titled "Puigdemont hace vida familiar en Girona después de proclamar la república." Signed by two reporters, Elena Giovio and Marta Rodríguez, and dated in Girona, the headline in English reads something like "Puigdemont has a family day in Girona after proclaiming the republic." Describing Puigdemont's schedule on Saturday it says:
“A mediodía ha grabado un mensaje que se ha emitido por TV3 a las dos y media. A esa hora Puigdemont se dirigía a un restaurante céntrico para comer con su mujer y unos amigos.”In English:
"At midday, he recorded a message which was broadcast on TV3 at 2:30. At that time, Puigdemont headed to a restaurant in the city center to have lunch with his wife and several friends."
Someone is either mistaken or lying here.
When in doubt, look to other sources. Let us consider the Guardian, which currently is more or less as respectable a source as the BBC in the Anglophone world.
The Guardian story is titled "Catalan Leader Vows 'Peaceful Resistance' as Madrid Takes Control of Region" and is signed by Emma Graham-Harrison, Sam Jones, and Stephen Burgen and dated in Barcelona. It does not explicitly mention Puigdemont's family either, but does state:
"Puigdemont responded to Madrid’s move with a choreographed show of normality, going out for drinks and lunch at a restaurant in his hometown of Girona, as the pre-recorded statement played out on national TV. He briefly stepped out to take a photo with supporters, to applause from other diners.”
What the Guardian refers to as a "choreographed show of normality" hardly fits with De Morgen's image of the gallant freedom fighter saying farewell to his wife and daughters to protect them from the looming "escalating political struggle." (The Dutch word "strijd" - like the English "struggle" or "contest" can mean violence, but doesn't necessarily have to.) In fact, the choreographed normality sounds much more like he went and had lunch with the wife he "sent out of the country." (Can we pause here to note the implicit machismo of assuming that Puigdemont's wife - who is presumably an adult professional - can be "sent" anywhere by her husband?)
I tried searching for the BBC story that allegedly (according to De Morgen) reported that Puigdemont had sent his family out of the country. I don't know exactly what story they're referring to, but while the BBC website does have a very thorough set of articles and video clips about Catalonia, a text search of the BBC website for "Puigdemont" and "wife" or "Puigdemont" and "family" reveals exactly zero hits. (Searching for "Puigdemont" alone gives a whole set of stories over the last several weeks.)
Given that there are Reuters photos of Puigdemont smiling broadly surrounded by his entourage and holding hands with a smiling woman on his way to lunch this afternoon, Le Monde has followed what seems like the better part of wisdom for a French newspaper, and made no reference whatsoever to Puigdemont's lunch companions. (If Le Monde tried to keep up with whether the female lunch companions of politicians were or were not said politicians' wives they'd have no time for anything else.)
So we are left with one lone story in the Dutch-language press, referring to an apparently phantom article of the BBC (for which there is absolutely no evidence) which paints Puigdemont as a martyr who is "probably awaiting arrest." ("staat mogelijk arrestatie te wachten.") While at this stage, given the outstanding stupidity of all concerned, it can't be definitely ruled out, Puigdemont's arrest for "rebellion" seems unlikely, since this afternoon a few hours after all of the above stories were published the Madrid government confirmed that Puigdemont is welcome to stand as a candidate in the elections which were scheduled for December 21. Presumably they're not planning to have him run from a prison cell. The idea that prison awaits Puigdemont appears to be more or less the fevered fantasy of the Spanish far-right fascists, and the Flemish who have never met a nationalist they didn't like.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly trivial detail, which may simply have been the result of someone mishearing or misunderstanding something. If it's an active lie, it's actually a charmingly españolista image, since it comes straight out of the Cantar de mío Cid, the extremely famous common literary ancestor of both modern Castilian and Catalan when the hero (unjustly exiled by the stupid king) parts from his wife and daughters:
El Çid a doña Ximena ívala abraçar;
doña Ximena al Çid la manol’ va besar,
llorando de los ojos, que non sabe qué se far.
E él a las niñas tornólas a catar:
«A Dios vos acomiendo e al Padre spirital;
agora nos partimos, ¡Dios sabe el ajuntar!»
Llorando de los ojos, que non vidiestes atal,
assís’ parten unos d’otros commo la uña de la carne (vv. 368-375).
Castilian speakers can probably hack their way through this, though the language is archaic. Catalan speakers will note the phrase "la manol' va besar" in the second line, used as a past tense, with the abbreviated indirect object, which is pure Catalan. (Also French, of course.) For those less interested in the evolution of romance languages, the English is roughly: El Cid went to embrace Doña Jimena (his wife), and Doña Jimena kissed his hand, weeping and not knowing what to do, and he turned once more to look at the little girls (and said) "I commend you all to God and our Father, now we must part, and God knows when we will meet again." He wept in a way you have never seen. Thus they parted from each other, like a fingernail from ripped from the flesh." So, basically this Reuters photo which identifies both Puigdemont and his wife. They don't exactly look devastated.
In any case, as I say, it's trivial. But it's upsetting because I think of De Morgen as a fairly respectable source, perhaps biased (who isn't) but not actively lying about verifiable details. I don't know who's responsible for the error (or misunderstanding or lie). But it worries me.
This past September during the Fulbright orientation I got into a discussion (ok, it might have been kind of an argument) with a fellow Fulbright researcher who is based in Barcelona, who is passionately pro-independence. He is a committed left-winger, whose argument for independence was essentially that he found it impossible to defend the status quo in Spain, much less Rajoy. Without going into the merits or lack thereof of his arguments, I thought of our discussion recently because he proclaimed that the coverage of Catalunya in the rest of Spain is "soooo biased." (I had to gently switch to Catalan to tell him that I was not exactly a naive observer. Vaig estudiar el català per tres anys. M'he oubliat gairebe tot, peró encara ho puc llegir i ho entinc bé. I count Salvador Espriu and Mercé Rodoreda as great writers of their time, and yes, I've read both in the original. Just to get that out of the way.) However, one of the benefits of reasoned argument, even with people you disagree with, is that you can sometimes learn things. I have tried to keep in mind his warning that coverage of Catalunya is biased, and to take the increasing number of stories about the proces over the last month with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, the salt seems to be bringing out the flavor in the narrative that suggests the Catalan independentistes are deliberately lying.
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