The spanish news agency EFE has commemorated its 85th anniversary in a ceremony in which its president, Miguel Ángel Oliver, highlighted its strategic character, backed by its informative power and reputation, its fight against disinformation and its commitment to truthful information.
The event was followed by the inauguration of a photographic exhibition entitled “Your collective memory”, an artistic account of the events, movements and protagonists of recent world history, which also pays tribute to the victims of the dana that affected the east and south of the peninsula causing massive floods.
The space Larra Laboratorio de Periodismo, which will host the exhibition until November 30th, was attended by the Ministers for Youth and Children, Ms. Sira Rego, and for Equality, Ms. Ana Redondo, diplomatic representatives, heads of different ministries, companies, universities, associations and social entities, the media, SEPI and the world of culture.
Among them were present the Director of SEPI's Participated Companies, Ms. Dolores Alonso; and the Ambassador of Morocco, Ms. Karima Benyaich.
Thousands of reliable news and images
In his speech at the event, the president of EFE, Miguel Ángel Oliver, said that EFE is “strategic” because it injects thousands of reliable news and images into the information system every day, because it specializes in the fight against disinformation with its Efeverifica service and because of its broadcasting power, especially in the large Spanish-speaking community.
It is also strategic, he continued, “because it serves society as a whole without establishing an editorial or ideological line, because of its commitment to reality and truthful information, because it enjoys a great national and international reputation and because of its clean, comprehensive and constant journalistic service”.
To maintain this work, he has defended, EFE has to reach where the private journalistic sector does not reach and that “is expensive”, and for that reason, after guaranteeing that “EFE does not receive the soup” but that “it fights for it every day”, he wanted to thank the State for making the necessary effort so that the public agency “survives, sustains itself and keeps looking towards the future”.
For his part, EFE's Director of Information, Leandro Lamor, pointed out that the EFE brand goes ahead of all those who have worked on it and is like the lights of an athletics track that are setting the pace to achieve the record.
Miguel Ángel Oliver talked during the celebration with three of his predecessors: Luis María Anson, Alfonso Sobrado Palomares and Gabriela Cañas.
Anson, president from 1976 to 1983, recalled the times of censorship, which did not prevent EFE from having extraordinary journalists, and his efforts to free the Agency from the colonization of other powers.
Sobrado Palomares, who held the position from 1986 to 1996, declared that the agency has always been very objective and recalled that the only advice he always gave to journalists was: “you have to be objective, but without adjectives, as a reliable reflection of reality at all times”.
Gabriela Cañas, who said that social networks have done a lot of damage and that agencies need to adapt to this reality because they continue to be fundamental, said that the State should increase its support to the agency, something she is convinced that “it will be achieved”.
The event was also attended by journalists from the EFE Agency who have worked in recent weeks to provide coverage of the floods that have devastated the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia in recent days.
In an online round table moderated by the director of the Audiovisual department, Marta Cerame, the news effort made by the agency was highlighted, among others, by the head of EFEs office in the Valencian Community, Adolfo Ibarra; the photographers Ana Escobar and Sáshenka Gutiérrez (Ortega y Gasset Award), and the multimedia collaborator in Málaga, María Alonso.
A tour of images that invite participation
The photographic exhibition with which EFE commemorates its 85th anniversary vindicates the role of the Agency in the construction of the collective imaginary through the thousands of photographs that it publishes daily and that feed an archive with more than 25 million images.
A good part of them are the images of the catastrophe caused by the rain in the provinces of Valencia and Albacete, which, two weeks later, continues to generate snapshots of great impact, and now also in Andalusia.
The exhibition, which was held at the Larra-Laboratorio de Periodismo gallery in Madrid until November 30, proposes a non-linear journey through different spaces that invite the viewer's participation through visual associations, chromatic compositions and photographic prints on large textiles.
It begins in Spain, with a visual chronicle of the post-war period that oscillates between rural and urban life and continues through the Transition, narrated through two parallel lines -one social and the other political-.
Next, the exhibition, which has its own augmented reality filter on Instagram and Facebook, opens its widest section to the rest of the world with a room divided by the Berlin Wall, represented in two ten-meter-long printed canvases with photographs of its construction, on one side, and its fall, on the other.
Finally, the great mural of the 21st century, a mosaic of 150 photographs that portrays the immediacy, splendor and chaos of our time from all possible angles with a double proposal of observation: general, as a chromatic composition, and in detail, through each of its captures.
The exhibition, which commemorates the 85th anniversary of EFE, is sponsored by Iberdrola and is co-sponsored by Moeve and Ephimera, with the collaboration of Meta, Canon, LG, BBVA, El Pozo and the Escuela Madrileña de Decoración.
