Carving out a new role for Colombia’s media

By Esben Q. Harboe

Armed body guards follow him everywhere and he only moves in an armored vehicle. Death threats have hampered the unrestricted movement of Ignazio Gómez, one of Colombia’s best known investigative reporters. For 12 years Gómez has been enrolled in the National Protection Unit’s protection scheme, which provides security to more than a hundred journalists and thousands of politicians and human rights defenders at risk in Colombia.

Yet as the Bogotá-based deputy of Noticias Uno – a Canal Uno current affairs program voted ‘best news program’ four times since 2010, he continues to investigate those people who have brought so many years of suffering on the Colombian people.

Nicknamed ‘Nacho’ by friends and foes, 54-year old Gomez is famous for his investigative reporting on drug-trafficking, political corruption, arms trade and international corporations’ involvement in the Colombian civil war. In the late 1980s Gómez aggressively investigated Pablo Escobar’s connections with the Colombian government and at one point published a list of properties in Medelin secretly owned by the drug lord.

“Colombia has been at war since I was two years old. Generations have experienced nothing but conflict and for many Colombian media workers conflict reporting has been an overwhelming part of our work. Now, our profession will have to learn to report on peace,” Gómez explains over dinner in a small restaurant near his home in Bogotá. His guards have been sent off and he touches on the psychological implications of having to deal with a constant death threat.

‘Like many other Colombians I am not a free man. I am constantly reminded of our country’s violent history, where threats are used to silence those who oppose injustice. I am lucky to be alive today but also dreaming of a future where I no longer have to look over my shoulder whenever I leave my house,” he says.

Local journalists and media have been heavily affected by the conflict and many have been working under threats and resolved to self-censorship as a means for protection. Journalistic work has been marked with excessive focus on violence and lack of depth and balance. Close to 50 journalists have been killed since 2002, according to Committee to Protect Journalists.

In Cucutá, close to the Venezuelan border and once a hub for violent groups such as FARC and ELN drug traffickers and paramilitary groups – local journalists describe how threats and violence continues despite efforts to root out organized crime.

At the daily newspaper La Opinión, the young deputy director Estefania Hernández strives to provide quality journalism to her readers despite a pervasive atmosphere still tense with fear.

“My grandfather used to say that if a snake bites you will get scared even of small worms. What he meant was that it takes one murder to plant fear in people. Threats have been used as a weapon by those who want to silence our journalists. And not only by armed groups and drug traffickers, but also by police, businesses and special interests,” Estefania shares. Her grandfather founded the paper and was later assassinated by military groups.

Jhon Jairo Ramirez, a staff reporter at La Opinión, has been under protection since January 2013, after he revealed the existence of a secret location used by paramilitay groups to burn corpses after a massacre committed in Cucutá two years earlier. After the paper ran his article he got a phone call from the group’s leader – imprisoned at the time of the call.

“The threats take many shape and forms but you are never in doubt”, Jhon Jaime explains.

He has received direct threats to his life, but also subtler yet frightening threats such as strangers calling to ask about the wellbeing of his mother and other family members. Although Cucutá is now a much safer place Jhon Jaime was recently shot at while moving from one location to another.

“I need to be alert at all times and make sure that I am in a safe place when my reports are published,’ he sighs. “If I did not have full protection today I would no longer be able to do my work. Then I would have to do as many Colombian journalists have done for decades: resort to self-censorship.”

Colombia is also one of seven focus countries in IMS’s ongoing global safety project, aimed to identify best practices in protection of journalists and establishment of safety mechanisms to counter a growing environment of threat and intimidation of journalists worldwide.

IMS has been working in Colombia since 2005. Between 2012 and 2014 a Norwegian-funded programme has supported the strengthening of safety and conflict sensitive journalism, carried out in a five high-risk provinces. A second phase of the programme, subject to available funding, will deepen and expand this work as well as support the media for long-term engagement in reporting on the transition from war to peace between the Colombian government and FARC. The aim is to strengthen the quality of journalism in reporting on the peace process and the transitional phase.

This article was researched and written prior to the October 2 referendum on the peace agreement.