Horizonte faces backlash over Valencia flood hoaxes

Horizonte and the Valencia flood controversy: from hoaxes to damage control

Few broadcasts carried the burden that Horizonte faced for its latest episode. The previous one had been, according to one participant, the most confrontational between Iker Jiménez and public opinion, and on the table was a demand: apologies for the hoaxes spread about the Valencia flood (dana) and explanations about Rubén Gisbert's role. Expectations, however, pointed elsewhere: that the program would be an exercise in live justification.

Some argue they shouldn't back down and trust they won't; others believe Jiménez and his team will speak plainly and defend what was aired without reservations. Some voices in the thread bet on one thing: that it would be a mess. And some predicted the mess would literally explode during the ad break.

What the previous episode is criticized for

The previous broadcast was judged as a product of easy tears and anger, very much in line with TV crime reporting, with the addition of alleged props: mud on knees, a supposed hidden witness, a scene recreated in a parking lot. Among the most repeated accusations is having accepted material that later didn't hold up and having mixed a legitimate complaint—the management of the catastrophe—with a staging that weakened that same complaint.

The underlying argument was not minor: to put those who were negligent in their place, there's no need to embellish anything. Those who defend the program respond with another idea, and it's not negligible: until that broadcast, a good part of generalist television had treated the catastrophe on the sly, without going in depth. That the gamble came out with imperfections doesn't automatically make those who didn't try impeccable.

The mud scene and Rubén Gisbert's role

The controversy over Rubén Gisbert lies in that muddy terrain. Some reproach the program for presenting as live material that wasn't, with copy, paste, and props, instead of going down to record where the mud was. Against that, another current of analysis considers the case overblown for the silliness it is and calls for giving him a right of reply on air, instead of resolving it with headlines.

Gisbert himself published that the media that talk so much about the flood should donate their advertising and audience profits to those affected and volunteers. The proposal, turned into a challenge, shifted part of the focus: it was no longer about what was aired, but who capitalizes on the tragedy.

The version of official sources

Here appears the nuance that is least highlighted. Against the word "hoax," some argue that there were sources that transmitted erroneous information in real time, and that those sources came from official bodies and the security forces. Under that prism, the error would not be an invention of the program, but the uncritical digestion of a contaminated information drip.

It's not an innocent argument. If the intoxication came from above, the reproach stops pointing at the studio and points at the origin. And there the public's response becomes uncomfortable for everyone: the credibility of a source is not inherited from the uniform.

The controlled dissent thesis

Another line of reading, even more uncomfortable, holds that Iker Jiménez and his team are the first line of a controlled dissent: the one that denounces the Government for doing it badly and ends up practically calling for harsher measures. It's the thesis that was applied before to pandemic management and is now recycled for the catastrophe. Those who defend it summarize it with an image: uncontrolled dissidents, sooner or later, are controlled.

It sounds conspiracy-minded and, in part, it is. But disagreeing with the official narrative is not the same as constructing an alternative narrative just as comfortable for power. The question, deep down, is not which side the host is on, but who benefits from each anger.

The government factor and damage control

At the table was also a guest whom a good part of the audience identified as close to the Executive, a gesture read as an attempt at damage control. The majority diagnosis was that the gamble went wrong: the guest didn't live up to the mud being stirred and ended up reinforcing, by contrast, those around him. The repeated conclusion is bitter: if the Executive has no arguments to defend its management, it shouldn't send anyone to defend it.

And in the background remained the question dropped by one of the participants: if the people help the people, what does the people need the Government, the political caste, and the Army for?

Ads, slow pace, and disappointed expectations

The start of the broadcast disappointed. Too many ad breaks, a pace that went, in the audience's own expression, from 45 to 33 rpm, and the feeling that censorship had entered the program. By mid-broadcast the complaint was that the program was soporific. The paradox is that a format that prides itself on freedom risks its credibility in the same ad break that funds it.

The conversation also jumped from the flood to conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt, some without any evidentiary support. That shift, from real mud to imagined mud, is what most wears down a format that lives on being believed.

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With this material, the broadcast points to a second week of controversy. If Jiménez redirects the narrative toward the sources that intoxicated him, he wins; if he entrenches himself in the idea that everything was a setup by his enemies, the wound opens again. None of this is written.