Reply #7: Threatened on all sides, Colombia's news media muzzle themselves. [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

http://www.cpj.org.nyud.net:8090/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/colombia/colombia_DA_title.gif
MONTERIA, Colombia

The main suspect in Orlando Benítez’s murder was never in doubt. Benítez, a lawmaker here in the northwestern province of Córdoba, was preparing to run for mayor of a municipality controlled for years by Diego Murillo Bejarano, a paramilitary chief known as “Don Berna.” Murillo, once a close associate of drug lord Pablo Escobar, hadn’t given the campaign his blessing.

The local and national press reported briefly on a police announcement of the hit, in which five men gunned down Benítez, his sister, and his driver on April 10. But the press didn’t mention Murillo or subject the triple murder to any significant investigation. “No journalist tried to check into what everyone suspected,” says Gustavo Santiago, news director of the Caracol Radio affiliate in Montería, the provincial capital. “It could have cost you your life.”

It takes mettle to be a journalist in this Andean nation riven for decades by a war that pits government and paramilitary forces against leftist guerrillas, by international syndicates that enable Colombia to supply most of the world’s cocaine and much of its heroin, and by an array of underworld organizations that control contraband, extort from businesses, and manipulate public officials.

In this case, news outlets feared reprisals not only from Murillo, who insists he had nothing to do with the assassination, but from President Alvaro Uribe’s government, which had suspended arrest warrants for the warlord as part of negotiations to demobilize paramilitaries. The talks had dragged on for more than two years, lately in a paramilitary haven the government set up just a few miles from the murder. Naming Murillo as the suspect would have focused attention on violations of a “ceasefire” the paramilitaries declared for the talks. And it would have fueled international criticism of Uribe-backed legislation awarding judicial leniency to paramilitaries who disarm.

Two weeks after the assassination, authorities finally broke the silence, announcing a fresh arrest warrant for Murillo. Even then, few news outlets explored the paramilitary chief's alleged role in any depth. One fear, Santiago notes, was that journalists would end up having to testify against him.

Such hands-off treatment is pervasive in Colombia, a Committee to Protect Journalists investigation has found. Interviews with three dozen news professionals show that media outlets and journalists across the country routinely censor themselves in fear of physical retaliation from all sides in the nation's conflict.

At least 30 Colombian journalists have been murdered over the past decade for their work. "We love our profession, but we're human," says Carmen Rosa Pabón, news director of Voz de Cinaruco, the Caracol Radio affiliate in the northeastern city of Arauca. "Threats and killings make us afraid. To survive, we have to limit ourselves."

On some occasions, verified news is suppressed shortly before broadcast or publication. In other cases, probing journalists are killed, detained, or forced to flee. More often, investigations never even get started. The issues shortchanged are human rights abuses, armed conflict, political corruption, drug trafficking, and links from officials to illegal armed groups. Journalists end up focusing instead on "pleasant topics like fauna and flora," says Angel María León, news chief of Arauca's RCN Radio affiliate.

Communities pay a high price. "Any region without investigative journalism is going to have impunity," says Jaime Vides Feria of Radio Caracolí in Sincelejo, a provincial capital near the Caribbean coast.

And the self-censorship has international dimensions. The Uribe administration, for example, is pushing for U.S. and European funding of a $130 million plan to reintegrate the demobilized paramilitaries into society. But foreign taxpayers can hardly judge whether the plan might bring peace if the press doesn't dare investigate drug trafficking by paramilitaries or their civilian attacks. More:
http://cpj.org/reports/2005/10/colombia-da-fall-05.php