At the moment, the meaning of the oldness does not keep any similarity with the one from does a few decades. Now it is lived more and with better quality of life; in anything it is looked a person of 60 years of today like one of 30 years ago. This knows to Maria Eugenia Pole, doctor in Sciences of the Information and author to it of the book very well To reconstruct the oldness from mass media. A work that, after presenting/displaying a diagnosis of the situation, proposes lines of action directed toward which the means reconstruct “the deficit� image that is had of the aging and that they themselves present/display. “The image that projects means is totally anachronistic and nothing has to do with the reality�, affirms this expert.

And it is that according to the author of the book, old being is not just like to be greater: “To be old it has a connotation pejorative, equivalent to which no longer serves. On the contrary, to be greater means that you have grown physically and psychically and that, for that reason, you must have a social privilege�. It is more, as it already defined the newspaper in its book of style years ago: “Old and old, or their corresponding feminine ones, do not have to be used to indicate an age stage, but when it is the case, a state of physical decrepitude�. In this point, the mass media, like agents of socialization of first order, would have to contribute to offer positive a social image on the active aging and the people majors, moved away of the oldness concept.

“We were more before the formed generation of history and with better economic conditions. A great part of the population arrives at the retirement in optimal physical training conditionses and mental, sedientas of culture, likings, leisure… For the first time, they are owners of his time and in them it is squandering it or investing it suitably. Because to become greater it is a prize, not a punishment�, assures the author the book. For that reason, one of the first steps to make a good communication on majors is to know the reality which is spoken. In this sense, he is interesting, for example, to cover with certainty the activities with the associations and universities with majors, since we come doing for ten years in FOOTPATH for active people, with the purpose of to reflect the continued and varied task that realizes.

Nevertheless, the present image of the majors is more near the fiction than of being truth, as Maria Eugenia explains Pole: “Unfortunately, there is ramillete of stereotypes that move away of the reality. The people majors are not passive, depresivas, dependant, ill… They are not a homogenous group either, since there are so many forms to age as people�. And she adds: “Often, dependancy and poverty speech as if we were at the time of the Celestine, who defined the oldness like “inn of diseases, thought inn, friend of quarrels, continuous anxiety, mancilla of the past, pain of the present, sad care of the future, neighbor of the death…�, sentences.

How to inform “better� on majors

“In the press, the majors usually appear in very annotated contexts: events and pensions. In the television, they are first flat one when it is associated to them to contexts of negative look, and in the series of fiction usually they do not have a worthy paper�, declares Maria Eugenia Pole. For that reason, to end this myopic� and “anexoric� image “, the University to your Alcance, of the Independent University of Barcelona (UAB), raises in its manual People majors: Images and voices in action, a series of recommendations directed to means, between which it emphasizes the care of the language, to avoid the topics and prejudices and to deal with the positive subjects and the innovating initiatives this stage of the life.

Also, to present/display variable graphical images that pick up the diversity of activities in which the majors are implied in the day to day, to tell their adaptation to the new technologies and to the present surroundings or to transmit his importance in the generational interchange, putting of relief his great experience, they are measured which they could occur so that the mass media, in their paper of agent in the promotion of changes in the attitudes of the population, favor a heterogenous image, positive and revalued of this group of age, as the International of Madrid takes shelter in the Plan of Action on the Aging, elaborated after the celebration of II the World-wide Assembly of Nations Units, that place in the capital of Spain in 2002 took.

Of this form, and conscious of the importance of means, as much in the creation of states of opinion like in the consolidation of social images, it is necessary to include/understand, first, and to show, later, the aging like an active stage more of the life, with his advantages and their disadvantages. For it, he is fundamental that the professionals of the communication approach the today majors to know their profile and to orient his work to his new social circumstances to be able to offer an exact and fit image of whom they are and how they live. Also he would be desirable, as it appears in Miniguía to inform on majors, published by the Meeting of Castile and Leon, “to include the voice of the majors in means�, that is to say, to incorporate in the social gatherings of television or radio to them or in the columns of newspapers. “It is urgent to give voice them, not only vote�, concludes the journalist Maria Eugenia Pole.

Lines of action to reconstruct the oldness

• The advertizing sector must be the revulsive one so that the image of the majors gives the turn that needs. The publicity would have more to be dared at the time of “selling� the image of the majors. From the point of view of marketing, they are infraoperated.

• He would be than desirable more its presence in the electoral lists. It is a question of common sense: who is going to govern to us better than those than come from return of many things. They would contribute a good sense degree that does not abound nowadays.

• The mass media would have to reclaim veteran faces, those teachers to whom it has taken off of means to replace them by beautiful busts, but inexpert. All we needed referring in the life and what better than the people with an ample baggage to its backs.

• The powers public must continue impelling the policies directed toward the active aging and to bury the paternalism towards the people majors.

• The people majors must shout more fort. The associationism is a good vehicle for it. Also they must fight for a reason or purpose individual, demonstrating to the world the good that feels to turn years and, mainly, not losing the illusion to live.


Maria Eugenia Pole
(To reconstruct the oldness from mass media)