Parking lots full of corpses that have turned out to be empty, figures of dead that are made up but that nobody contradicts, official cars falsely attacked that were indeed attacked… The DANA in its passage through Valencia has left a disgrace in deaths, a lot of damage to streets and properties and a tear in the truth and veracity.
About the hoaxes that have been propagated taking advantage of the tragedy. is the subject of this Thursday’s edition of Conspiranoids (La Sexta. Today, Thursday 10:30 p.m.) which will focus on the lies about the DANA.
The program hosted by Jokin Castellón investigates in depth the great current conspiracies and what are the great interests that they hide and in this case will analyze the responsibilities and the lies generated by the DANA.. Ana Pastor is the producer of the program and founder of the media. Newtral. We talked to her about hoaxes, who creates them and why.
What are we going to see in this Conspiranoids And why the need to focus on the DANA issue?We have in verification an experience of about 11 years and in that time there have been three very serious moments in the issue of hoaxes. Of course one was the pandemic, it was the big explosion, it was also a pandemic of hoaxes; the war in Ukraine; and this is the third one and the three are connected. In El objetivo we were the first program to do verification. We put a lot of effort into this topic and the jump is Conspiranoicos which is focused on who, why and how they do it. And of course, when the DANA arrived we have already seen it. As happened on the other two occasions, it is time to remember who they are, why they are doing it and above all, the impact it is having on the victims. It is infamous that people are lying about whether there are more victims, because there are already enough misfortunes. Gisbert was not born yesterday, he has not made a mistake, he is a recurrent character like so many others, such as Beatriz Talegón, Guillermo Rocafort and many others who have been doing harm in this way for years. And we are talking about dead people. It is a very serious thing.
Are they repeat offenders?These characters repeat themselves when there are dramas, tragedies. I mean, the Ukrainian war allows us to see that they also launch a lot of hoaxes and of course in pandemic. And now again. And not only are they the same, but they copy or copy from other people, the United States, and so on. That is to say, they are not even original, but this is a strategy that those of us who have been fighting against disinformation for many years have seen a lot. It is a common strategy, organized, and with an impact on society. They don’t do it just for the sake of it, they don’t just wake up one morning, some do it for economic motivations, others simply to generate more chaos and more fear. The King himself said it the other day in Paiporta, with the issue of disinformation.
Do they have a common denominator or common interest?Yes, there is. There is almost always an economic return. Either because they have YouTube channels, or because they ask for money through Paypal and donations, or because they get a place in the media. There are people in networks, people in networks and television and then we have people who are in politics. I think from each of them some name may come to your mind, but they are like the three layers of the onion. The fact that Alvise is in the European Parliament was a surprise to some. Others of us have been seeing that phenomenon growing under the radar on Telegram for a long time, and now it’s taken the ultimate leap. It happens with many other characters that feed back. They do have commonalities. If you look at their narratives, the topics they choose, that form of outrage…. Going to help Valencia while you are spreading a lie as big as the one about the parking lot? I mean, we have already seen this. It is an even more serious populism than the one we have already experienced before.
Is it worse than terraplanism, for example, because here there are dead people involved?Absolutely. Of course it is. That is why I was telling you that it is a qualitative leap. Not only have we gone worse, but the crack that these people are opening is even more serious, because we are talking about deaths, at a time when people are very scared. Not even a week had passed since the tragedy and they are still saying today that they are hiding the figures, that there are so many dead. Does anyone really believe that the families of the missing or the dead are not going to tell the dozens and dozens of journalists on the ground that they are hiding something from them? We have already seen how people are speaking publicly about their anger. Does anyone really believe that they would not say with names and surnames that a family member is or is not being searched for? We have already seen that the people there are very brave in expressing what they need, what they feel, how badly they are being treated. Well, it is the same with the deceased, isn’t it? But of course, these people are looking for a breeding ground at a delicate moment.
Have we seen it all?I advance you that in Conspiranoids Jokin Castellón is going to reveal something else that one of these characters has done, something very serious. And I am not talking about the parking hoax. I am talking about something even more serious. This has to be told and we are going to fight it. We have to fight this kind of things because whoever is profiting is also hurting the families.
And how is this battle, this fight going? Who is winning?Well, it is a battle of light versus darkness that is not always pleasant for those of us who have been involved in verification issues for many years and have suffered accusations and harassment… Some of these people have denounced me and I have had to go to court. And I have had to go to court against them in some cases as well. The case of Alvise is well known, he has denounced several times and I have won sentences. But also Guillermo Rocafort. He is an ultra who denounced me for calling him ultra and I had to go to court. Of course, he lost. I sued him for accusing me of a crime and I won. It is a fight of light against darkness and we are seeing it in Conspiranoicos, in how they pointed out the first day to Roma Gallardo, Desokupa, etcetera. If you see all the names, they are somewhat from the same orbit. This is not casual. It happens in other countries. We have seen Tucker Carlson in the United States who started where he started and has ended up interviewing Putin and walking with Abascal. This is not casual. And our society is living it too. So it is very important that we try, although it is a thankless task, that we try, well, to put the focus and try to look for the truth.
Do you always succeed?We may get it wrong sometimes, I say that all the time. I am also self-critical, but it is one thing to make a mistake, which I think is what happened to TheGrefg, for example, and another thing to be actively launching disinformation campaigns with economic objectives and with the obsession to destabilize society.
Is there a solution? Prolifera because there are no consequences?Well, it’s hard to see it. I have had to go to court and notice that I have a very powerful loudspeaker which is the TV, but I considered that I was not going to use that loudspeaker, I was going to go to court. And sometimes the courts are right and sometimes they are wrong. We have to make the justice system get involved in these issues, because many judges are also being affected. There are many bullies and liars who are accusing some judges of crimes. I think sometimes you are not aware until it happens to you. Those of us who have been doing this for many years I think we have seen a change. It is true that it is difficult to see it in a week in which Trump wins the election again, but I think we should not lose heart. I think the people deserve it. For example, the people of Paiporta, of Pontón de Chiva, of Utiel? they deserve that we put up a fight. If they are there cleaning their own abandoned houses from the hand of God, how can we not try?
Should we always believe the official information, which is the first to be questioned?They are looking for one thing and that is that when you generate these doubts you do not get people to doubt about the Bonaire parking, you get people to doubt everything, you no longer believe anything or anyone. And that is the number one objective of this type of campaign. Rubén Gisbert is believed by much less people than a week ago. That is why it is so important Conspiranoids. That is why Jokin’s work is so important, even if he is sometimes being harassed in return. Is it really a surprise that this gentleman, Rubén Gisbert, is lying and that he is indecent? For me, no; for the team of ConspiranoidsFor La Sexta, no; for La Sexta, no; and for La Sexta’s audience, no. It is our job and we must continue to insist. It is our job and we must continue to insist.
But, should we doubt the official sources?No, what you have to do is to contrast, but not to doubt. When there is a difference in data, for example, with official sources, it is necessary to contrast. With unemployment data, for example, we are not talking about the fact that you have doubts about the data, we are talking about the interpretation that politicians make of that figure. In the verification we focus on the data, not on opinions, not on subjective impressions. We must demand transparency. And of course, when a data is not given, we have to give a blow to the person who does not give it. The official sources work, the Police, the Civil Guard, the Army are reliable… they are doing an incredible job. And if the Army, the Police and the Civil Guard say that they have not found any dead people in Bonaire, who are you going to believe: a man who gets out of a car, gets muddy and his name is Ruben Gisbert or a Civil Guard agent who has been working hard for years to make this country a better place? Well, it is clear to me. I will believe the Guardia Civil, the military or the police and not the other way around.
At HorizonIker Jiménez and Carmen Porter cited as a source a conversation that a comrade of theirs had overheard… What do you think?I have no idea, but we already saw it in Pandemic. There were many audios of the type of “a cousin of mine who is in the hospital who says that there are a lot of children from Madrid dying and they are hiding it from us through COVID”. The parking lot hoax has been replicated in exactly the same words. “I have a friend who is a Civil Guard, who’s brother is there as a diver. He has gone down to the parking lot…”, same words. The other day I asked TheGrefg to rectify and he has done so. And it seems to me that this is also to be valued, he reads a message from the chat in his live from streamers and in fact he doubts in the live stream and says that it could be a lie. What I have reproached him for is that when in doubt don’t tell. If that is done by a streamer who has a lot of responsibility but who is not a journalist, imagine what it seems to me that journalists do. It seems incredible to me to doubt whether the President of the Government’s car has been attacked or to doubt whether there are dead. Now they are asking if the death toll is being hidden. It seems to me irresponsible and I think it will weigh on our conscience. Those of us who have been on the air these days will keep a record of who we have given live coverage to, what has been said live. We choose the collaborators we have. Nobody in the network asks me who to have and who not to have. I decide and therefore, if in my program or in the network there are certain types of things, I am responsible and it will weigh on my conscience. And I think that with a disgrace like this, even more so.
Have you had the opportunity to talk to The Grefg or only what you have crossed through social networks? They had their ups and downs on Twitter?Well, as I have children and nephews, I have been following TheGrefg for many years, not on Twitter because I started to follow him this week, but on YouTube, and I know perfectly well who he is and all the others. youtubersbecause I like them. I have been to events of youtubersI’ve been talking about them for many years and not just about Ibai, who seems to me to be number one in every way. That’s why it hurt me that he made that mistake. Yesterday, very angry, he answered me live. In the middle of the night, when I was already going to bed to watch the American elections at 03:00, I saw that he started to follow me. I would love to be able to talk to him. It seems to me that he is a guy who has done something that, for example, other people are not doing these days, which is to rectify. He says that we did not count that he was raising money and it is true that he is raising money, but that does not take away the mistake he has made. If he wants to talk, then I am delighted. Did he have bad intentions? Well, probably not.
We were talking before about Trump and the United States, how do you see that a president who has spread world order hoaxes has been elected again, and moreover, with flying colors?It seems that in the social debate and in the public debate anything goes and that everything that happens there ends up being replicated. When the element of contrast is a network, such as Twitter, which is playing absolutely in favor of one of the candidates, it is clear. There, disinformation has played a very important role. There is also an added reflection on what the Democratic Party is doing. Perhaps they also have to reflect on how badly they have done in the last few months waiting for the change of candidate, etcetera. And then, there’s probably also a lot about Kamala Harris being a woman and racialized. In a world as complex as the one we live in, which is a dystopian, constant series, neither easy nor miracle solutions work. A social rift has been open for some time now, the floodgates of madness have been opened and that is where the monsters nest. And I think we are all societies at a very, very similar point. I am very confident when I see the people of Paiporta talking, with common sense and light. I want to hold on to that. I think that’s how most people are here in Spain.
Can a conspiracist be brought back to reason?Well, I think it’s difficult. I think the pandemic has started to open up that crack that we’re talking about now. You will have come across a lot of people who wonder if we’re being sprayed, et cetera. But I think that belittling and not wanting to listen to people who have those thoughts doesn’t help either. I think we have to refute them, but we also have to do it from common sense. I don’t agree with the idea of despising those who think differently, even in this matter. I do not believe that all opinions are respectable, but they exist and we have to listen to them and our job is also there, because if not, we are going to find millions and millions and millions of people voting for options like Trump’s without having understood why even today.
You have been involved with DANA, after so many years are you getting tired of it or is it still touching your spirit?No callus, no. The day I get a callus I will definitely have to go and do something else. Unfortunately for the world we live in, I have had the opportunity to cover the war in Ukraine, where I have been three times. I’ve been to the Indonesian tsunami of 2005. I have covered famines in Niger and I have to tell you that I have not encountered anything like Valencia. It is very, very curious the impact of having lived through many things and the other day in the live shows you get emotional with the people. What kind of person would I be if I have a lady next to me who does not know if her parents are well or if I see two elderly people greeting us from a balcony at night with a candlelight and I do not get emotional? I see my family there too. You’re seeing it and smelling the suffering… what kind of person would I be if I didn’t live it that way? I would do something else, just like that.