LaSexta launches 'Conspiranoicos' to debunk myths and flat earth claims

Lasensla debuts 'Conspiranoicos' against flat earth and misinformation

Can a rumor be debunked without opening a debate? Lasensla launches 'Conspiranoicos' on Thursday, October 3, at 10:30 PM, hosted by journalist Jokin Castellón and dedicated to major conspiracy theories circulating within and outside Spain. The network presents it as a tool to uncover 'all the names, secrets, and hidden interests' behind these theories. The declared target is the viewer who wants to know how to refute a rumor to spread it later. Part of the audience has read it exactly the opposite way: as an operation to mock those who doubt.

What 'Conspiranoicos' is and when it airs

The host himself defined the format's line with a phrase that leaves no room for doubt: it won't be a table where we seek confrontation or debate, but to deny and debunk. He added that viewers must arrive 'with a certain commitment,' knowing how to confront these rumors and then explain them in their daily lives. Translated: one direction. There is no cross-examination, only refutation, and the schedule places the show on Thursday night competing directly with other educational formats.

Why part of the audience interprets it as an attack

Here lies the problem. A current of analysis argues that the issue isn't the rumors, but the single basket: grouping the flat-earther with anyone who distrusts official data turns any criticism into a symptom. This diagnosis, they say, is more profitable than refuting with data. The reading has a paradoxical side: if a network dedicates a weekly program to the subject, they reason, it is because the phenomenon worries and grows them. Mocking the eccentric so the uncomfortable falls by association is the most repeated thesis.

This criticism also involves proper names. The program pointed out communicators who use the expression replacement immigration; one of those cited replied that the term appears in United Nations documents, an aspect that, according to this version, the program had not contextualized.

Flat earth, reptilians, and the duel with Horizonte

The first episodes targeted flat earth, reptilians, and manual rumors, those no one defends aloud. The format was placed as an alternative to Horizonte, Iker Jiménez's show, sharing the time slot: according to circulating data, the mystery program tripled its views. Audience ratings thus became the score of the dispute. Same night, same hour, two opposite ways of looking at the strange.

What the program leaves out: graphene and nanotechnology

Another current of analysis points to topic selection. They ridicule flat earth, revive Elvis and the moon landing, but there is no mention of graphene, nanotechnology, or the Fifth Column. The circulating explanation: they don't cite them even to mock, because doing so would publicize theories that those who defend them consider true. It may be calculation. It may be negligence. In any case, the pattern of what is ridiculed and what is ignored is, at minimum, striking.

The format's three questions: who they are, how they act, what they gain

Promotion relies on three questions: who they are, how they act, and what they gain from all this. It is the classic structure of a debunking report, with one important difference: when the object is a community of people, the answer to what they gain easily becomes a label. The precedent many cite is that of formats that built humor at the expense of eccentric guests. The genre is called parody and it works, but it ceases to be journalism when the guest has no right of reply.

Lasensla, Telecinco, and the list of verifiers

At the same time, another network added its own piece with a Risto Mejide program focused on the dana storms and the theories surrounding them, in the line of urgent verification. And on the radar are scientific communicators: news programs reported that several of them, including Quique Bassat, complained about attacks for their work on elbichito and climate change. The complaint, for part of the audience, sounds like the wolves protesting the bites of the lambs.

From premiere to cancellation: what audiences say

Shortly after the launch, the version circulated on social media that the network had canceled the program due to its audience ratings, with the argument that Horizonte tripled its views and that it would be the third space canceled by Ana Pastor in less than a year. The version is not officially confirmed in the available materials, so it should be taken for what it is: a one-sided accusation. What is measurable, for now, is discomfort. A program designed to debunk rumors generated its own conspiracy theory before the season ended.

The practical consequence, according to this narrative, is a displacement: more and more viewers stop watching these spaces and get informed from other sources, which in turn widens the gap that the program itself claimed to want to close.

A reasonable doubt remains. If the goal was to debunk rumors, the result was an unintentional manual on how to fabricate a new one: that there is an audience willing to be told what is true for fifty continuous minutes, and to be thankful.