Shutdown of Colombian magazine raises questions

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: CNN

Colombia lost one of its best-known independent magazines this month when the parent company of Cambio suddenly announced it was ceasing publication.

The demise of the hard-hitting publication has raised questions in journalistic circles about whether other forces were at work.

The magazine's publisher, El Tiempo Publishing Group, is owned by Spanish conglomerate Grupo Planeta, which owns a Colombian television station and is seeking a government license to operate a national network.

Cambio ostensibly came to an end because of economic problems, but skeptics claim that the real reason was that Grupo Planeta wanted to appease the government in its bid to operate a national channel.



Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/23/colombia.magazine/

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"A group of journalists from Cambio discovered that the Colombian military allegedly killed a group of farmers and portrayed them as members of the FARC rebel group. More recently, the magazine uncovered that the department of agriculture supposedly granted millions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy families who later contributed to the presidential campaign of the former agriculture secretary, Andres Felipe Arias."

[bertman]

1. Ummmm. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. South American version. Rec.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Group Denounces Pressure on Colombian Journalists

Group Denounces Pressure on Colombian Journalists


PARIS – Concern about political pressures on Colombian journalists as elections approach is heightened by revelations that presidential aides and intelligence officials took part in illegal spying directed at judges, opposition politicians and news professionals, Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday.

Given that background, Paris-based RSF said, it is fair to wonder “whether the decision by the owners of the (Colombian news-)weekly Cambio to fire its directors ... and scale back its activities was due solely to economic imperatives,” as the publishers said.

Besides reporting on the illegal wiretaps, Cambio exposed the criminal links of the former public prosecutor in Medellin, home town of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and “the negotiations between Washington and Bogota for the installation of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia,” RSF said in a statement.

RSF spoke out a day after a former chief of Colombia’s DAS spy agency testified at his trial that he passed along illegally gathered intelligence to the president’s office.

The press freedom watchdog said the revelations “are likely to have a major impact on the presidential elections” set for May 30, in which Uribe may seek a third four-year term.

Cambio’s publisher, Casa Editorial El Tiempo, whose majority shareholder is Spain’s Grupo Planeta, announced Feb. 3 that the magazine will become a monthly publication with a focus on soft news, entertainment and tourism.

CEET President Luis Fernando Santos said after the announcement was made that the drastic overhaul was due to financial losses, but the decision sparked suspicion and criticism.

“Those of us who work in the media know the reasons weren’t just economic and that the closing down of Cambio had to do more with the toes they stepped on with their journalistic investigations and their denunciations than with the lack of a (viable) model,” Maria Jimena Duzan, a columnist for Colombia’s No. 1 newsweekly Semana, said.

More:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=352763&CategoryId=12393

Thanks for breaking this story, AlphaCentauri.

Rec.

[Selatius]

3. Yet, somehow I suspect the US is more likely to condemn Venezuela over Colombia on press freedom.

I wonder why...

[Judi Lynn]

5. Watching the treatment the two Presidents get in our corporate media is a real education!

Simply beyond any trace of conscience, they screech over license for government antagonists in Venezuela which would NEVER have been allowed here, and go completely mute on Colombia's ranking as one of the worst places in the entire WORLD for the health of real journalists.

Where is the U.S. press on the subject of threatened Colombian journalists?
by Latin America News Review

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_HW-vOUHhZ2k/Sa-MXNcFATI/AAAAAAAABbQ/NwIkKz5kvIo/s400/Foto1.jpg

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe gestures during a
speech at the Army School in Bogota June 1, 2006.
REUTERS/Jose Miguel Gomez (COLOMBIA)

By Justin Delacour

Latin America News Review

November 9, 2007

While an alternative U.S. weekly has published an excellent feature story about the Colombian government's complicity in forcing some reporters to leave the country, there appears to be a cover-up of the story in the mainstream U.S. press. Given that one Colombian reporter under threat --Gonzalo Guillen-- writes for a U.S. publication (Miami's El Nuevo Herald), it is rather mind-boggling that none of the major U.S. dailies have reported about the subject. On October 5, the Associated Press penned a short report about Guillen's imminent departure from Colombia, but a Lexis-Nexis search reveals that no major U.S. newspaper picked up AP's report. The New York Times devoted one measly sentence to the subject, buried in the eighth paragraph of a report about a different subject altogether.

Only the Miami New Times' piece puts the story into context. Ever since Alvaro Uribe launched his candidacy for Colombia's presidency in 2001, Colombian reporters such as Guillen who have investigated the Colombian leader's alleged drug ties have been denounced by Uribe and then threatened by unknown parties.

A good number of journalists have fled Colombia. Fernando Garavito, a columnist for the Colombian daily El Espectador, was forced into exile in 2002 for having written about the sensitive subject of Uribe's alleged drug ties. The Miami New Times reports that Daniel Coronell, another journalist of the Colombian weekly Semana, was also just forced to flee the country for writing about Uribe's alleged relations with the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Just as Uribe's complicity in the repression of journalists is longstanding, so too is the U.S. press' cover-up of the story. On the few occasions that AP has written about Uribe's ham-fisted approach to critical journalists, the most influential U.S. dailies have not followed up on the story. On April 17, 2006, AP reported that Uribe gave a "stern lecture" to Semana editor Alejandro Santos that was "considered by groups including Human Rights Watch to be a frightening attempt to muzzle the press in a country where journalism is already a very dangerous profession." Yet a Lexis-Nexis search reveals that the "prestige press" simply ignored the story. Despite the fact that the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle have correspondents who report from Colombia, none of the four papers highlighted the dangers posed to journalists by Uribe's harsh words.

Given the U.S. press' stated commitment to the freedom of the press, it is astounding that the press has failed to report about this subject, much less criticize the Uribe government for its ham-fisted approach to critical Colombian journalists.

More:
http://www.answerbag.com/article/Where+is+the+U.S.+press+on+the+subject+of+threatened+Colombian+journalists%3F/51e04931-d130-46c3-e96c-65ac95a0605b/subject

[Judi Lynn]

4. That's reducing the already diminished numbers of remaining Colombian journalists

who still dare to print anything which might drive a government official to put a contract on him/her for the paramilitaries to execute.

There's been a lot of material written about it from OUTSIDE the country, but it never gets discussed in our corporate media to any honest degree, OF COURSE.

MEDIA-COLOMBIA: Death Threats and Self-Censorship
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Nov 2, 2005 (IPS) - They live in such fear that they dare not venture beyond the city limits. The death threats are periodically renewed, just in case it occurs to any of them that the danger has disappeared. They are reporters in the midst of Colombia's four-decade civil war.

After they were targeted by collective threats in 2003, 16 journalists with the leading publications in the eastern oil-rich province of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, were included by the government in a special protection programme and taken to Bogotá at the urging of the Colombian Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP).

The government programme for the protection of journalists provided them with financial support for three months. Shortly after the support dried up, 12 of them returned to Arauca, where they had left their families behind.

The government then assigned them two vans, protected by two bodyguards each, for transportation, which meant that the reporters had to resign themselves to never obtaining exclusives.

"We have to go out and get the news in groups," Ángel María León, president of the Arauca Journalists' Association and a correspondent with the Bogotá daily El Tiempo, said in a press conference in the capital. "It is very difficult for us to get used to going about in a single vehicle carrying up to eight reporters."

Arauca is a conflict zone where the leftist guerrilla groups - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) - face off with the extreme-rightwing paramilitaries and the armed forces.

Also active in the area is a special army brigade equipped, trained and financed by Washington to guard the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline that carries oil pumped by the California-based Occidental Petroleum from Arauca to the Caribbean coast in northwestern Colombia. The pipeline is one of the ELN's favourite targets.

Also taking part in the news briefing were reporters from the northwestern province of Sucre, large parts of which are under paramilitary control; Buenaventura, the main port on the Pacific Ocean and the focus of a turf war between the irregular forces; and Florencia, the capital of the southern province of Caquetá, where the U.S.-financed Plan Patriot, which includes military training from the United States, is being implemented.

The press conference was organised Saturday by the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) to present the special report, "Untold Stories: Threatened on all sides, Colombia's news media muzzle themselves".

The report, written by U.S. journalist Chip Mitchell - who has been based in Colombia for the past two years - with contributions from the CPJ's Frank Smyth, describes the conditions faced by reporters in war-torn regions of Colombia.

"There are issues that are off-limits for us," said León, who admitted that reporters have to censor themselves. "The news must be reported only up to a certain point. We can't provide complete coverage, sadly."

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30852

~~~~~~~~~

18 December 2009
Television host shot dead in western Colombia

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, December 17, 2009 - An unidentified gunman shot and killed Colombian journalist Hárold Humberto Rivas Quevedo in the western Valle del Cauca province on the night of December 15. The Committee to Protect journalists today called on Colombian authorities to investigate the killing and do everything in their power to bring all those responsible to justice.

Rivas, 49, host of the political commentary show "Comuna Libre" on local TV station CNC Bugavisión and sports commentator on the local radio station Voces de Occidente, left the CNC Bugavisión offices in Buga shortly after 10 p.m., station manager Javier Gil told CPJ. Minutes later, Rivas arrived at a local funeral home, which he also managed, where he was approached by an individual wearing a dark motorcycle helmet, according to local news reports. The unidentified assailant fired five shots at Rivas' head before fleeing with a second individual on a motorcycle that was parked outside the funeral home. Rivas died immediately, Gil told CPJ.

On the night of his murder, Rivas had just finished taping a live show. According to the station manager, Rivas was generally critical of civic problems but did not directly criticize particular officials or authorities, nor did he touch on sensitive issues. It was not immediately clear whether he was killed because of his work.

A special team of investigators from the local police began an immediate inquiry, reported the national daily El Tiempo. Gil said investigators had not made any leads public.

"Colombian authorities must promptly and thoroughly investigate the killing of Hárold Humberto Rivas Quevedo," said Robert Mahoney, CPJ's deputy director. "In a country where self-censorship has become the norm among provincial reporters, authorities must show their commitment to the protection of the local press by bringing all those responsible for Rivas' death to justice."

The rate of journalist murders has declined slightly in Colombia, historically one of the world's deadliest nations for the press, CPJ research has found. The government credits increased security, although CPJ research shows that pervasive self-censorship has made the press less of a target.

More:
http://www.ifex.org/colombia/2009/12/18/rivas_shot/

~~~~~~~~~

Threatened journalists denounce "state of terror" in Colombia and blame Uribe

Hollman Morris and Claudia Julieta Duque presented evidence of threats, harassment and surveillance against them and their families and accused President Álvaro Uribe of being responsible —“by action and omission”— for political persecution, EFE reports (in Spanish). See Colombia Reports and Reporters Without Borders for summaries in English.

The journalists blame Colombia's intelligence service, the Administrative Security Department (DAS), which by law operates under the direction of the president. DAS has been accused of committing espionage against political opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders. (Colombia's Foundation for Press Freedom has described illegal wiretaps as the main obstacle to journalistic work in Colombia.)

In the case of Morris, whose TV program Contravía presents a critical view of Colombia's armed conflicts, the evidence points to a campaign launched by DAS to discredit him at the international level. The intelligence service also mounted a persecution apparatus against Duque.

In an opinion column in El Espectador newspaper, Cecilia Orozco criticizes the passivity and silence of prosecutors about the reporters' accusations and warns, “It is not possible to continue to ignore the plight of press freedom in this country."

Morris and Duque released their evidence at a press conference on Tuesday, which is designated "Day of the Journalist in Colombia." This year, the day was marked also by recent news that Cambio magazine has dismissed its top two editors and will be converted from a weekly specializing in investigative reporting to a monthly general-interest magazine. Many Colombians fear politics motivated Cambio's decision. In a radio interview, Uribe denied exerting pressure on journalists or editors, the Associated Press reports.

Also this week, the International Federation of Journalists reports that the number of attacks against Colombian journalists last year—167, including six assassinations—increased by more than one third from the two previous years.

http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/6428