Liu Sivaya: war correspondent breaks out of the pigeonhole

Liu Sivaya: the correspondent who wants to laugh without leaving the trenches

In her latest video, journalist and war correspondent Liu Sivaya has announced a shift in her channel: she will keep covering conflicts and politics, but without giving up humour, sarcasm or personal content. For months, she says, she has felt boxed into a role of mandatory seriousness, as if reporting on war meant giving up any spontaneity.

She admits that war coverage has cost her some of the lightness she had at the start. Now she wants to get it back, and at the same time distance herself from the idea that all critical creators form a single bloc with shared causes. "Everyone has their own goals," she says in essence: she will collaborate with whoever interests her, full stop.

The reaction has been anything but a collective hug. Part of her audience has responded with personal attacks and degrading comments focused on her appearance and private life, a classic antiestéticature of the social media ecosystem. A woman who covers wars saying she also wants to talk nonsense and laugh is still, for some, an invitation to professional discredit.

The drift surprises no one who has seen other cases: online harassment of women journalists in Spain has been a structural problem for years, and conflict reporting is no exception. The curious thing is that Sivaya's announcement is, at heart, a defence of professional versatility: you can be a serious correspondent and still have a life and a sense of humour. The abuse she has received shows that the pigeonholing is not only external — part of the audience does its bit to reinforce it.

With this reaction, the journalist's message has been partly drowned out by the noise. It remains to be seen whether she can impose her new tone without losing those who only wanted to see her serious and suffering.