It's nice, for once, to be able to blog about a fine judicial decision. Yesterday saw the conclusion of the bizarre "boric acid trial", in which four senior police officers were accused of having falsified a forensic report in order to eliminate references linking ETA to the Madrid train bombings. I won't write more here about the details of the trial, I have already posted about it on my other blog. Suffice to say that those behind this trial, the promoters of the conspiracy theories about the train bombings, are having some difficulty digesting the verdict. This trial was almost their last hope, with the conviction of these officers they could have kept alive the great conspiracy.
El Mundo today has resorted to a blatant falsification of its own in its headline about the case. This paper is in quality freefall, I can imagine that there would be journalists in the worst of the British tabloids who might have issues about working in such an ethics free environment. The problem is that the methodology they have used in their appalling, manipulative, coverage of the train bombings now infects almost everything they publish about political events in Spain. This is not just because of its politics, right wing media such as ABC are still capable of maintaining basic standards for all the political bias behind their reporting - ABC probably carried some of the best Spanish reporting on the Madrid bombings trial. El Mundo has now made manipulation of the news its core activity.
El Mundo today has resorted to a blatant falsification of its own in its headline about the case. This paper is in quality freefall, I can imagine that there would be journalists in the worst of the British tabloids who might have issues about working in such an ethics free environment. The problem is that the methodology they have used in their appalling, manipulative, coverage of the train bombings now infects almost everything they publish about political events in Spain. This is not just because of its politics, right wing media such as ABC are still capable of maintaining basic standards for all the political bias behind their reporting - ABC probably carried some of the best Spanish reporting on the Madrid bombings trial. El Mundo has now made manipulation of the news its core activity.
4 comments:
I wish someone could explain to me what the controversy is. I would like to study up on it for myself, but I can't seem to find any source materials that make any sense.
This is what it sounds like has happened:
Very soon after the bombings, and right before a major election, the government, or more specifically important members of Partido Popular insinuated that it was ETA's doing. When it was shown to have actually been islamist terrorists, Partido Popular was shamed yet again, and they also lost the election. (That makes 3 big 'shames' on them, in the eyes of the public...the fact that the terrorist act happened under their watch, the fact that they were too quick to try to make a political statement against the wrong perp's, and that they lost the big election.)
Then, in the course of the investigation, some of the evidence, (Boric Acid) looked to some police officers, like it may have come from ETA after all, perhaps taking some small bit of shame off the PP members who were too quick to pass judgement after the bombings. It also fit with evidence from North Africa, that would indicate that terrorists worldwide sometimes end up working together, or at least their 'business' can sometimes help each other, even Al-Qaeda and ETA.
???
Anyway, back to the Boric Acid. The police investigators then changed their minds, and changed their official reports. They then got caught, and got in trouble for changing the reports, and were even going to be brought to trial, but now the changed reports have been deemed to be okay the way they are.???
Is there anything I got wrong or left out?
midnightgolfer, there was never any serious suggestion that the presence of boric acid pointed to ETA or anyone else's involvement in the train bombings. Boric acid has no established use for explosives or terrorist acts, it has plenty of domestic uses and is freely available across the counter. The acid found years before the Madrid bombings in an ETA safe house was never related to any terrorist act by ETA. It's as if you find sugar in both the ETA house and the houses of the Islamists involved and then try to suggest that the two groups are linked because they both possessed sugar!
The report was altered, rightly in my opinion, to remove a speculative attempt to connect ETA with what were at the time just suspects for the train bombings. The court yesterday made it clear that the stuff about ETA had no place in a report which was supposed to be a chemical analysis. The PP and friendly media insisted on anything that pointed to even the most remote possibility of ETA involvement, which is why they made such a big fuss about this issue. They would have been happy for these officers to go to jail if the result was a suggestion that there was a conspiracy to exclude ETA from responsibility for the bombings.
You can't find any source materials that make sense. Does that mean I have to rewrite my other blog?
I made my comment prior to reading your other post in your other blog.
Thank you for your clarification.
So, much ado about boric acid, then?
Graeme, This is something I certainly do agree with you on. If you'll forgive me ending a sentence with a preposition.
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