Listening Without Prejudice: Tourism journalism

Javier Mato is a journalist who contributes to the Spanish tourism and travel magazine, "Preferente". He has penned a short opinion piece for the website under the heading "Waiting for Podemos". As is common with websites there was a facility to comment on the article, and as is also common the comments missed the point. Mato was not acting as an advocate for Podemos, as two suggested. A third corrected them and rightly suggested that they hadn't read what he had written.

Mato's article was a stinging attack on the recent tourism decree in the Balearics. Or rather, it was a stinging attack on elements of this decree which had nothing to do with tourism, such as the change to building regulations to allow the Rafa Nadal tennis centre to go ahead and the legitimisation of land on which Son Espases hospital is built. Mato went on to suggest that the decree may as well include provisions for school heating and aspects of education. He was being ironic. As he was in concluding that "these shameless acts which destroy all logic" take away what credibility remains of "our political class" and so open the door to Podemos.

Rather than address the point that Javier was making, commenters wandered into tangential territory. It happens all the time. And there are two key reasons why it does. One is that the article isn't read properly (or is read in a way to suit a particular agenda). Two is that commenters aren't really that interested in the article, only in highlighting their own prejudices, opinions and solutions, even if the latter might be half-baked, impractical, sometimes self-serving and self-promotional or fail to appreciate wider issues (of legislation, for instance).

Hence, we get comments of the following variety (not untypical through the good offices of the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" and its Facebook page): Mallorcans don't know what they're doing when it comes to tourism; Mallorcans don't like foreigners; Mallorcans don't and won't listen to what anyone from outside Mallorca might have to say.

I find such generalisations ungracious to say the least, and just who are these "Mallorcans" anyway? They are rarely specified, if ever. They are, it would appear, some amorphous mass of non-intelligent life form. Of course they know nothing about tourism, which is why Mallorca has provided some of the world's leading hotel chains, which is why Mallorca has exported its tourism know-how, which is why Mallorca was the birthplace of tourism. If by Mallorcans we mean politicians, then there may well be credibility to the claim, but otherwise there is not. Mallorcans don't like foreigners? I treat such a view as some kind of reverse xenophobia. It may have some cultural legitimacy on account of insularity, but it would be a dislike reserved as much for mainland Spaniards as it is for people from other countries, while if one takes this as safeguarding interests, then which nation (or island) can truly be said to be any different? And what of not listening to foreigners? Do the "Mallorcans" not listen to Peter Long of TUI, to Stefan Pichler, the CEO of Air Berlin, to Natalia Vorobieva, the CEO of Russia's leading tour operator, Natalie Tours? I would suggest that they listen very closely.

And they certainly listen when news, opinions and reports presented by journalists from overseas are good or bad. They might circle the wagons when Magalluf hits the headlines, but they certainly don't ignore what is said, and when there is, by comparison, a glowing tribute, they readily and naturally acknowledge it. But when it comes to listening, how much attention is paid to the Mallorcans' own journalists? Javier Mato was making a political point, but "Preferente" as well as the better-known "Hosteltur" magazine are reference points for tourism opinion-making. They are Spain's leading tourism publications, and they are both published in Mallorca. Coincidence? No. Mallorca gave the world tourism as we have come to know it, and so it has maintained a journalistic tradition in tourism that goes back to the turn of the last century when it was journalists, notably Miquel dels Sants Oliver, who created the vision for what was to become tourism as we now know it.

Too little attention may be paid to journalists. Wrongly so. The "Mallorcans", in this instance the regional tourism ministry, love journalists who contribute to the tourism promotion strategy of having them write nice things about Mallorca and the Balearics, but they should listen just as attentively to what else they have to say. In a year when the 150th anniversary of Sants Oliver's birth is being commemorated, it would be appropriate were they to be. But then, whatever they might say, there will still be those who choose to read what they want to, even if it is not what was being said, and to self-indulge their own agendas.

I Would Like To Learn Spanish (in 150 minutes)

There is an awful lot of stuff that goes by the name of journalism but is in fact disguised advertising. Much of this masking can be elaborately and exquisitely worded and so give the reader little inkling as to the true purpose - selling; the subject of this selling being holiday travel. I am immensely grateful to the forum on PuertoPollensa.com for having brought to my attention an article on an obscure blog that conforms to this elaborate prose paradigm but appears to be a puff for the Cappuccino café in Puerto Pollensa. It might not be puff, but even if it is, and the reader doesn't consider it thus, then it has done its job. However, reactions to the article indicate that, notwithstanding a glowing description and therefore promotion for the resort, there might be something more to it. Something which makes you wonder as to its principal purpose.

If travel offers some fertile territory for the advert-dressed-up-as-lamb, product-placement journalistic tour de force or tour de wherever it happens to be this week (the tour courtesy of this, that or the other tour operator), it is not alone in inviting a PR agency to incentivise a journo to indulge in some veiled promotion. So prevalent is the practice that I have to conclude that there are now courses one can go on or purchase via the internet in order to rapidly become an expert on how to write the it-really-honestly-isn't-an-advertorial-but-a-legitimate-piece-of journalism. One can learn all one needs in no more than two and a half hours. Just as one can learn Spanish in two and a half hours. What do you mean, you thought that you needed longer? Oh no you don't, because an article in "The Guardian" tells you that you don't.

This article is for one of those CD, listen-and-repeat exercises that will give you sufficient vocabulary to undertake rudimentary Spanish conversation after 150 minutes. So, just think, if you live in Britain, speak nary a word of Spanish, but get on an easyJet this summer, you will, by the time you touch down in Palma, be able to discuss the Spanish national debt crisis with the bloke at passport control. Only in a rudimentary fashion admittedly, but the bloke at the desk will be sufficiently impressed to overlook the fact that your passport matches with a name on a blacklist database.

I don't doubt that one can pick up some vocab and some bits and pieces, but speak Spanish in two and a half hours!? Pull the other one, it's got "campanas" on. If it was really quite this easy, then the Balearic Government, now having approved its new language bill, one by which the young of the islands will be taught English from age three, should just scrap the bill, as the kids wouldn't need to go right through the school system until they leave secondary education in order to acquire English skills. They could give up when they are about five and then move onto another language, and so be proficient in about eight foreign languages by age 16. Just plug the Balearics kids into a CD player and within no time they'll be analysing the Hegelian dialectic in word-perfect English.

"The Guardian" article, and no, I'm not identifying the "larn-yersel-Spanish" course it refers to, is curious in more ways than it just being some puffery for the course. There is some of the usage, such as "quisiera". Strictly speaking, it is correct, as it translates as I would like, but this is not everyday use; the simple present "quiero" is. It is as well that the course, to quote the article, does not do "overt grammar". Try explaining to an English speaker that "quisiera" is in fact the imperfect preterite subjunctive, and he would either look at you as though you were mad or smack you in the mouth for trying to be a clever bastard. English speakers, as a general rule, wouldn't know a subjunctive of any type, imperfect preterite or otherwise, if it were, well, to smack them in the mouths. Oh, and "if it were to smack etc." is a subjunctive (a future one), just in case you were wondering.

Still, there is something to be said for the CD language-learning way. And so, in the spirit of the new language law, the Balearic Government should insist on all passengers travelling to Mallorca being made to listen to a "larn-yersel-Catalan" course. Oh hang on, no, that's wrong, they don't want people to learn Catalan. Or do they?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2013/apr/22/learn-spanish-150-minutes-course


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Shutting The Presses: Local papers in Mallorca

Reports of the death of the local newspaper have not been greatly exaggerated. It was put into intensive care some years ago and has waited for the seemingly inevitable moment when the life-support system has to be switched off. As with the local newspaper almost anywhere, so it is with the Mallorcan local newspaper, and one of its sources of life support, public money, has been switched off.

Does it matter if newspapers which serve local communities in Mallorca cease to be? In Alcúdia, as an example, its local paper (magazine in fact) stopped quite some while back. Whether it has made any difference to the life of the town is debatable.

Local papers do have a role to play. They add to a sense of local identity and they are a key medium for the dissemination of news that is specifically relevant to individual towns. New media have, however, undermined their function, and the withdrawal of advertising revenue has made most virtually untenable.

Though the papers fulfil an important role in local communities, there are questions regarding them that go beyond the selling of advertising and the impact of the internet and social media. One of them has to do with that source of life support - public money.

Would you be surprised to learn that several million euros of grants were paid to newspaper publishers in the Balearics by the previous government? These grants have been ended by the current government, but the decision has more to do with lack of finance than with what the Balearics Supreme Court once described as the arbitrary nature of grants to the press by the former government.

The press, in theory, is independent. It isn't of course because it often operates according to specific agendas. Whether public money influences these agendas or not, the mere fact of it being made available can create a perception of independence being compromised.

As with papers produced for the island as a whole, so it has also been the case that the local papers have received grants - from the government and the Council of Mallorca, from the directorate for language policy and from town halls. With the partial exception of the latter, these grants have also been withdrawn.

A case can be made for public money to support the press, as it does enable there to be means to provide local media. This is especially so with those local papers that don't operate as businesses as such; some are run as cultural societies. Nevertheless, the same perception can be created; that they might not be genuinely independent.

The recent history of local radio and television in Mallorca has been one in which there have been clear suggestions as to political influence and to stations being in effect political mouthpieces. In the same way, it is hard to not at least think that local papers might have been influenced by, for instance, a generous town hall administration.

If the press is merely a medium by which local issues are reported, then it is only performing part of its job. Journalism falls into three general categories. One, reporting, is factual, or should be, but it can be prone to its own inherent bias, dependent upon the source or the paper's agenda. A second is comment and opinion, while a third is more of the investigative or forensic variety, an expensive form of journalism of which there is almost none in Mallorca.

Of the second category, it is fallacious to believe that comment should be balanced; by definition it isn't. To quote the broadcaster and journalist Jonathan Meades: "fairness (aka balance) is a jurisdictive virtue not a journalistic one". But so long as there exists a relationship of trust with the reader that opinion is that of the author and not one that may have been guided by whatever force, including public money, then the reader can accept the writer's integrity, even if he or she may disagree with the opinion. It's known as the freedom of the press, a concept enshrined in the Spanish constitution and a concept that goes beyond the imposition of censorship; it has to do with independence of thought.

But how free is the press in Mallorca? Parts of it are more so than others, and there are some outstanding and challenging local journalists. Other parts are not, and as much as economic hard times and changing media, a failure of independence, one caused by various influences and pressures and not just public money (now no longer a double-edged sword of influence), is what also closes down the life support, especially when there is life elsewhere - on the internet and in social media.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Source Of Inspiration: On popular tourist destinations

I have a problem with journalists and writers who do not cite sources. It is a problem that has been exacerbated ever since the lazy writer or one desperate to knock off a few hundred words in order to meet a fast-approaching deadline took to using Wikipedia and other sites as get-out-of-jail cards, sometimes using verbatim what can be found on the internet with not a mention of or an acknowledgement as to the source.

Easy it may be to cobble something together with the aid of Google and the cut and paste commands, but it is short-changing not only the reader but also the writer him or herself. Some while ago, I drew attention to the apparent lifting of text from the home page of puertopollensa.com by a journalist writing in "The Sun". It was bad form and it was also a derogation of the journalistic art. For the journalist or other writers, words - his or her own - are the stock-in-trade. Even paraphrasing shows some attempt at originality, but what amounts to plagiarism is nothing of the sort and "in journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics". Where does this quote come from? Wikipedia of course.

One might argue that recourse to using chunks of text from websites is a way of working "smart". Really? I'm not sure that there's anything particularly smart about it. It's not smart, it's not big and it's not clever (and I think Steve Wright was the one who popularised the not big and not clever line, or rather popliarised, as he would have said - I can cite sources till the cows come home; and no, I don't know who came up with that saying. Look it up if you wish; on Wikipedia).

There is another type of non-acknowledgement, which is the unnamed or vague source. Sometimes this can be understandable, when someone prefers not to be named. Fair enough, and it happens all the time, as in, for example, "government sources said". But there are times when it is far less understandable, which brings me to where I really want to be today. In "The Bulletin" yesterday, the editorial referred to "an article in a top British newspaper over the weekend". Apparently this article revealed that Mallorca has slumped to the number eight spot of the "most popular destination(s) with British tourists". The editorial went on to use this as a means of beating the island's tourism. It may well indeed need a beating, but this is not the point. What is, is that because the source is not named, there is no way that the reader, myself in this instance, can check where the article came from or, as importantly, the context and rigour of the results. Well, I suppose one could by spending ages going through Google in the hope of unearthing it, which is in fact what I started to do, but to no avail.

Without being able to identify the source, the reader is left with an incomplete and potentially unreliable picture. There are, it may not have escaped your attention, any number of these "top ten" or "top one hundred"-style articles knocking around in the press. Some have a basis in research, e.g. that which is offered by the likes of ABTA, the tour operators and market research companies; others don't necessarily.

All I did manage to find when a-googling was an article from "The Daily Record", dated 14 July. This made the observation that western Mediterranean destinations are losing ground to those in the eastern Med and north Africa. But we know this anyway. What the article also revealed, seemingly based on what Co-operative Travel had to say and possibly contrary to the trend, was that the "predicted holiday destination hotspots" for 2011-2012 will be Turkey at number one and at number two ... The Balearic Islands. So much for a lack of popularity.

Maybe Mallorca is at number eight, and if so it is less than heartening news, but there can be all sorts of explanations as to why. If one doesn't know the source or the context, one cannot make a full judgement or at least be given the opportunity to make such a judgement. This is just one reason why sources should be acknowledged.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.