The president of the Spanish news agency EFE,, Miguel Ángel Oliver, has opted for the implementation of a large content platform in Spanish “by and for the huge Spanish-speaking community” in which institutions, the world of culture and the media would participate, “as China did in its day with TikTok”.
Oliver, who participated in a debate organized by the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE), with the collaboration of the “la Caixa” Foundation on the theme “What will the media of the future be like?”, recalled the defense recently made in this sense by the journalist Luis María Anson, former president of EFE.
It would be, he explained, “a tool for the future that preserves and relaunches the great world of knowledge, history and future of the Spanish-speaking world, just as Silicon Valley did in the nineties and early two thousand with the birth of the Anglo-Saxon digital unicorns, or in the same way that China has conquered digital consumption through TikTok”.
The president of EFE has recognized that for the implementation of this “tool of the Hispanic soul” that speaks in Spanish, it would be necessary a very important mobilization of economic resources and talent, “a cross-border effort” to create these applications that could be shared by hundreds of millions of people who have the common tool of the Spanish language.
Institutions such as the Royal Academy, the Ibero-American Language Academies, the Cervantes Institute and the entire “great ecosystem of culture and the Spanish-language media” could participate in it, including Radio Televisión Española and the EFE Agency.
The president of EFE was convinced that it is in the new applications, and not in the old media, where consumption is multiplying and, therefore, he stressed that the support of new technologies should not be underestimated and that the use of artificial intelligence should be promoted to deepen journalistic work.
“We should not remain, for many reasons, in the age of paper (...) however romantic it may seem to us,” said Oliver, who insisted that the media must adapt and not fossilize. The media have to vindicate and strengthen their role of mediation through credibility and using all the innovations within their reach, said Oliver, who emphasized how Agencia EFE is a large company in which, precisely because they are human, “mistakes are made”.
And the fundamental thing when a mistake is made is to recognize it, rectify it and work hard to prevent it from happening again, stressed the president of EFE.
He also stressed the need for the media not to give in “to the superciliousness of characters such as Elon Musk, who propagates the false idea that the media are now the citizens. Or the US president-elect himself, Donald Trump, who wants to surround himself in press conferences more with 'influencers' than with contrasted information media”.
The day of debate is the second of those organized by the FAPE and in which have also participated in a round table moderated by Josep Cuní, director and editor of Las Mañanas de RNE, Carolina Miyata, executive director of Prodigioso Volcán; Pepe Cerezo, founder of Digital Journey; Esther Paniagua, journalist and author specializing in technology and cybersecurity, and Luis Alonso Martín-Romo, director of the Master's Degree in Television Journalism at the University Nebrija.
