The declassification of a huge amount of documents related to the corrupter of minors Jeffrey Epstein poses a number of important challenges to journalism today. A myriad of information has immediately appeared in which it is said that this or that person appears mentioned. Control + F to search for names, and down, which downloads! This is how, for example, we know that José María Aznar, Ana Botella and her son-in-law go out there. But at the moment no one has related this mention to any possible criminal activity, even less related to the network of prostitution and pedophilia that he maintained. The most relevant apparent link between the two, at this point, is the speech Aznar gave in his era of delusions of grandeur when he justified going to war in the Gulf during an event of a foundation funded by the millionaire. As tragic as this complex character has been in Spanish history, we will agree that the mere inclusion of his name in a package of two million pages does not entail any scandal and it could even be questioned whether it deserves to be news (when the obvious intention is to splash his name, putting him next to the disgraced tycoon).
Another thing is if the reason why Aznar received a package from him is found and this sheds light on some relevant issue. I am concerned that the release of these two documents will be reduced to simple name-dropping. Let’s see who, in this word soup, is the first to find someone they know, preferably from the opposite trench. If there is no real investigation from here and we are left with the answer marked by the perverse rhythm of immediacy – effervescent and showy, but which goes down like the foam of the beer –, we will have lost a golden opportunity to demonstrate the power of journalism in the age of data.
