Joaquín Manso, Director of El Mundo, reflects on the challenges of communication at CUNEF Universidad

As part of the complementary activities organized by the School of Business, Economics and Law, the session titled “The challenges of communication in a changing world” took place.

The session, moderated by Santiago Carbó, Professor in the Department of Economics at CUNEF Universidad, focused on issues such as the transformation of Spanish society and its impact on communication over the past two decades, as well as the future prospects of journalism and democracies in an increasingly globalized and interconnected context.

The event began with a keynote by Joaquín Manso, who reflected on the trajectory of El Mundo since its founding on October 23, 1989, at a time when, as he noted, “history was beginning to accelerate.” The creation of the newspaper coincided with major historical milestones that shaped the contemporary world, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of commercial internet, which, in his words, marked “the symbolic end of the political 20th century and the technological beginning of the 21st,” ushering in a context in which “the world that welcomed that newspaper no longer exists.”

Manso also highlighted the reorganization of societies around new values, hierarchies, and forms of authority, particularly following milestones such as the launch of the iPhone in 2007, which he described as “the origin of the possibility of producing information anywhere, leading to a crisis in any institution based on intermediation, such as the media.” In this regard, he emphasized that the competitive advantage of media outlets lies in “producing reliable information and offering interpretative judgment in a globalized world.”

According to Manso, referring to the financial sector, “before there is financial credit, there must be moral credit, because before a society lends money, signs contracts, or makes investment decisions, it must trust that there is a recognizable difference between truth and falsehood.”

Today, barriers to entry in the information market have disappeared, meaning that any individual, institution, or government can produce content, distribute it, and reach millions of people instantly. This also gives them the power to inform or misinform. As Manso stated, “the media have lost the monopoly over distribution, recommendation, and conversation, but we still retain the monopoly over verification and the organization of judgment.”

The Director of El Mundo also warned about the importance of safeguarding truth in democracies, stressing that “truth is the defining element of democracies, not because democracies do not lie, but because within them there is the possibility to uncover a lie, denounce it, verify it, and socially sanction it.”

The session highlighted the importance of credibility, verification, and critical thinking as essential pillars not only of journalism, but also of the functioning of democracies and trust in markets and institutions.

You can watch the full session in the following video.