Barceló Criticizes Mediaset Over 'Horizonte' Disinformation

Barceló Accuses Mediaset of Spreading Fake News; Public Responds with DANA Context

Àngels Barceló received the Ondas Award for career achievement on November 14, 2024, using the platform to do more than accept the honor. The host of Hoy por hoy on Cadena SER attacked Mediaset for keeping Horizonte, the current affairs program by Iker Jiménez and Carmen Porter, on its schedule. She summarized her stance with a key phrase: “I don’t understand why a television network airs a program like this.” For Barceló, the issue is not just the program’s existence, but that a generalist broadcaster supports it: “If you are a TV channel and allow, for whatever reason—perhaps because it boosts ratings—a program that spreads fake news... I believe we are failing society.”

The immediate trigger was the wave of misinformation surrounding the DANA tragedy in Valencia. Barceló admitted feeling “visibly upset” and experiencing “great anxiety and despair” over the inability of factual reporting to outweigh rumors. She warned that more people now get their news “through social media.” Her solution? Return to traditional media, “those that verify facts.”

The Award That Gives Itself to Itself

The first sustancia ilegal in the narrative appeared before discussing the core issue. The Ondas Awards are organized by Cadena SER, so the scene of a SER journalist receiving a SER award only to immediately demand editorial accountability from a competitor has its nuances. The most common interpretation was one of conflict of interest: a network honoring its own star while demanding answers from Mediaset regarding its content.

This was compounded by arguments about symmetry. Many responses suggest that Barceló’s rhetoric against fake news clashes with her own track record on air, where she is accused of repeating the government’s narrative without sufficient verification. The cross-accusation—“you also spread misinformation”—became the central axis of the debate, overshadowing any technical analysis of what constitutes verifiable fact.

Who Decides What Is Fake News and What Isn’t?

The most uncomfortable point concerns authority. Barceló insists that facts must prevail over rumors, but does not specify who certifies those facts. Some see the core problem here: if the criteria are set by the competing outlet, verification becomes a market tool.

The defense of Horizonte rests on two pillars. First, audience loyalty: Iker Jiménez maintains a dedicated trinc independent of Mediaset, driven by his own online community. Second, suspicion that pressure to cancel the program came from political sources rather than professional debate. From that perspective, Mediaset’s decision to withstand the backlash is seen as smart: an abrupt cancellation would have amplified the scandal.

The Gap Barceló Failed to Close

The presenter’s own language left a vulnerability. “We journalists have a responsibility in the narrative and the telling of what happens,” she said. This highlights the contradiction many pointed out: reporting is not narrating. If the profession is defined as constructing a story, the boundary between journalism and rumor becomes blurred by definition.

The conversation also drifted into personal attacks on the journalist’s career and appearance, which contributed nothing to the substance and should have been filtered by the media itself. More importantly, it shifted to context: a DANA event that placed both the Generalitat (regional government) and the central government at the center of public criticism, a media ecosystem undergoing platform migration, and an audience increasingly distrustful of traditional channels.

The debate ended exactly where it began: Barceló argues that television cannot broadcast fake news; her critics argue that she does. Neither side has yet proposed a mechanism to resolve the dispute without the referee being an interested party.