What-Who-When-Why-How...leaving out the 6th “W” word means leaving out crucial information:
Why?
This week, the Guardia Civil sent out a press release and some video footage. It was taken up and shared by many media outlets and news providers.
Only one source was used. That of the institution.
And a crucial question was missing: why?
Except Eldiario.es, whose article alluded to the insurmountable administrative barriers faced by migrant people in the city, we have not found any other media outlet asking the questions that are necessary to ethical journalism. Instead, we found photocopies of press releases, without any effort to investigate further.
In these uninformative, or even misinformative, articles, these is no mention of:
Why are so many people forced to leave their homes?
What exactly does the legal and bureaucratic apparatus in Melilla look like, and how does it trap migrant people indefinitely in the city?
What point of despair do migrant people reach that, due to the lack of safe and legal routes, they feel forced to risk their lives buried under broken glass or ash in an attempt to reach mainland Spain?
We need decent, human journalism, committed to the defence of human rights. A journalism that investigates more, and photocopies less. That never stops asking why.
This is how to provide our society with the tools necessary to understand the roots of what is happening.
To put two and two together.
To see and understand the normalized injustice.
And, from there, to feel compelled to transform it.