Four years ago Alejandra Andrade received the Ondas Award for best presenter for her work leading the investigative program Fuera de coverage and four years ago she was left without a program. She says that her life did not change, but, laughing, she confesses that “it was giving us Ondas and canceling the program.” Since 2019, Andrade has been fallow, waiting for the opportunity to put her back where she performs best, “in the mud.” The opportunity has come to her again from the hand of Mediaset where she will soon premiere the new Out of coverage.
However, to whet your appetite and given the avalanche of information about the so-called zombie drug, fentanyl, Cuatro will broadcast tonight (10:50 p.m.) and next day the 30th two special programs about the investigation carried out by the journalist and by the program equipment billed by Producciones Imposibles and Onza.
“It has been very hard,” he confesses to us in a conversation via Zoom. “We have seen how people die in the streets, ambulances that cannot cope with overdose cases and thousands of addicts thrown away and abandoned by the administration,” he says. Because despite the harshness of this drug, Alejandra Andrade recognizes that there is a lot of sensationalism, a lot of sensationalism and “many lies” around this epidemic. Hence, since Mediaset had her again, it was clear that the first program she was going to do would be about fentanyl.
It all started a long time ago during a trip to San Francisco. Andrade was recording a completely different report when he began to notice the number of drug addicts everywhere. Not only in the poorest areas of San Francisco but “on any street you could find people lying on the ground with syringes in their arms.” “That’s when I first heard the word fentanyl.” And that’s where Andrade’s “tremendous” journey to discover the truth about this drug began.
Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin and has become the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 49. It can kill with just one dose and today it leaves 200 dead every day and thousands of families broken, while its expansion throughout the world seems unstoppable. The devastating effects of fentanyl, the distribution and sale of this drug and the overwhelming story of its victims are the plot lines of Fentanyl. A lethal epidemic, the exhaustive and shocking report in two parts that can be seen in the two special installments of Out of coverage.
The most serious thing a journalist can do is not tell the truth
“The team has done a deep journalistic investigation into this drug and we have managed to interview traffickers, victims and put a face and heart to the figures of this pandemic,” explains the journalist, who recognizes that, although it has not been the harshest report whom he has faced, he has been very impressed by “the age of the consumers: very young kids who get hooked very quickly.” “We have been with families who have lost their children of 16 and 17 years old, minors who buy this drug through social networks. The situation is dramatic,” she adds.
The preview images of this special perfectly describe this situation to which the journalist refers, “a situation that people have to see, but see it truthfully, without speculating and without falling into morbidity.”
For Andrade this is the most important thing when he prepares one of his reports. He acknowledges that he has been obsessed with “not publishing anything that was not proven because there is a lot of misinformation.” How is it possible that there are patients addicted to a drug that a doctor has prescribed? How do you prove that fentanyl is on the street, that it has reached Europe and that it is already in Spain? “Much of what is told is lies, it is fake news. That is why we go to the villages, we talk to drug addicts, who tell you that there is something strange about drugs, that they notice that cocaine produces the opposite effect, that The wounds they have do not close, they have rashes all over their bodies…”, he reveals to us.
When you ask her if she is not afraid when faced with situations such as going to a town or the very nerve center of fentanyl in Los Angeles, the Skid Row neighborhood, Alejandra Andrade does not hesitate for a second to answer: “I am not afraid of nothing because if I had it I wouldn’t be able to do this type of reporting. I know where we can enter, I know where we are going and I know who we are going with. In the end it is talking with people like you and me.”
I know the streets are full of evil, but I get along very well there.
And Alejandra Andrade admits that she couldn’t be on a set – “I can’t even last four days in the newsroom” -. She needs the street, “the mud” because she is clear that the street is where the best stories are, it is where I get gold.” “I know that the streets are full of evil, but I get along very well there,” she tells us between laughter
After four years away from the intensity of a program like Out of coverage, Alejandra Andrade decided that why would she have a soft landing. “There is nothing more spectacular than reality,” she says. And reality is what Out of Coverage tonight aims to show.
In the first part of the report, Alejandra Andrade enters the most dangerous place in Los Angeles. Only the fire department and some NGOs from these cities dare to enter that place, where more than 40,000 addicts are crowded in the streets. During her tour of the area, the journalist puts names and hearts to the faces that the tragedy has reduced to statistical data, speaking with both addicts and traffickers.
He also talks about this very serious problem with the Pulitzer-nominated journalists from the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle who have investigated it in depth. With them he discovers that the chemical fentanyl reaches from China to Mexico, where the cartels use it to cut other drugs such as heroin, and from there it is sent to California with the help of illegal immigrants willing to risk it to cross the border. “We give a voice to the people who know about the matter, to those who are hooked, to those who investigate it (…) The most serious thing a journalist can do is not tell the truth,” he concludes.
