Various opportunists have been expressing themselves in recent days about the “necessary disappearance of the public agenda” as a condition for freedom of expression. Backed by the waste that the State has made over the years, not only of advertising budgets but of the entire public treasury, and the manipulation of opinion through the use of indirect censorshipbenefiting the “friendly” media and harming the “opponents”, it is intended to establish that state advertising should not exist.
And the premise is false. What should not exist is extortion, or any limitation to freedom of the press, maximum expression and foundation of republican democracy, and the only right with double constitutional protection. But the National State should not and cannot stop rendering accounts of its work, nor omit giving citizens the necessary tools to use public policies for their benefit.
For that, it is essential to understand what state communication is about. Public communication is nothing other than the way in which the State —which we all are— puts itself at the service of all. It is the way that the president uses to tell citizens how he is fulfilling that mandate and how he manages that transfer of powers that has been made at the time of voting, but that contains a substantial condition: the voter must know what, how and because; and whoever communicates it must be precisely the one who received the mandate.
It is under the responsibility of the body in charge of public communication to carry out a fundamental democratic service: that the people know what it is about, what is done with their funds and their destinations, and grant them the tools for the necessary social control of government acts.
In these times, public communication is far from having the purpose of “directing the political thought” of citizens or guiding their ideological conception, but must provide the necessary accountability that their government owes them, alerting them to issues that can prevent with their own actions, or illustrate them on those mechanics with which the State returns their taxes, and with which they can have a better life. This is the extraordinary democratic end that fits the public communication of the 21st century.
Thus, we must start from the basic premise that citizens have the full right to enjoy information, but also considering that they should be the protagonists of their own history, that this leadership lies in the social genetics of these times, in which the social agents —far from becoming passive recipients— seek to be a part. The governmental public communication system is responsible for providing them with the channels so that said leadership materializes, in order to satisfy their expectations from the administration itself, making use of all the tools available, including new technologies, which mix participation open, with the most immediate proximity and the information offered.
We can then say that government public communication is, at the same time, a right of the citizen and a duty of the administration. Consisting of keeping the sovereign informed about the actions of the government that he has chosen, the mechanisms to control it and benefit from his measures, and the circumstances of which he must prevent himself —and how to do it. In summary, It is the fundamental channel through which the State reports how and to what extent it fulfills its role.
It is natural that it is not enough for the citizen that the administration designs and executes public policies for their benefit, but that they must also know them fully, know their modes of exercise and their effects. A policy that nobody knows about is useless. For example, if a new credit line is created for citizens with lower wages, implemented by a state bank and nobody knows that such a line exists, then the measure does not work. An adequate policy fails if there is no adequate communication of it.
In addition, the message that is communicated must be directed, because if said credit line is, for example, for flooded agricultural producers, a general message that does not identify the social sector to which it is addressed and that does not channel it through the appropriate ways for the receiver to receive and understand it.
In this way, the state responsible for transmitting the message must ensure that it is timely; for adequately selecting the channels so that the sector to which it is directed is reached and, at the same time, the largest possible number of individuals in said sector; and because all this happens at the lowest possible cost for the public coffers.
End state publicity, it tends to hide, to hide, to maintain caste privileges behind the backs of the people. It is called “guideline” in a pejorative sense, seeking to give it a negative connotation, but it is actually a democratic channel of communication with the taxpayer.
By the way, it must be well used, as should be the funds for the construction of roads or dams, without conditions or spurious purposes, like the administration of any area of the State.
But “end” with the public communication of the State it would be an unforgivable mistake to which they try to induce us behind an alleged moralizing wave, which seems to pray that everything must disappear so as not to go wrong. For something not to go wrong, you have to manage it well, not disappear it. Good administration, with an emphasis on absolute freedom of expression, is what is required.
