Weltzeit 2-2021 | Local insight, global reach: Working in a strong network with partners

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FE ATUR E A RT ICLE S

134 years of defending freedom of expression And the struggle continues. Recognized for its journalistic innovation and as the origin of internationally renowned writers, the Colombian newspaper El Espectador takes a stand for independent media. by Élber Gutiérrez Roa

El Espectador is the oldest media outlet in Colombia and a recognized stage for journalistic innovation, investigation, denouncing corruption, promoting democratic values and training internationally renowned writers and reporters. It was founded in 1887 to exercise independent journalism and disseminate liberal ideas amid conservative hegemony. El Espectador suffered several closures due to political persecution and its founder, Fidel Cano Gutiérrez, was imprisoned a number of times as a result of official persecution. Those were times when reading El Espectador had been declared a cause for excommunication by the high hierarchs of the Catholic Church. El Espectador was the journalistic cradle of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, who developed all his talents here as a columnist and correspondent in Europe. Much of Gabo’s literary work was first published by El Espectador — from his first short story ’The Third Resignation’ to the first

18 Weltzeit 2 | 2021

chapter of his masterpiece ’One Hundred Years of Solitude.’ But the history of El Espectador is not only built with stories of excellence from a literary point of view. In its 134 years of life, El Espectador has been a symbol of courage and even of survival in the face of the powers that have historically threatened freedom of expression in Colombia: corrupt politicians, economic emporiums, drug trafficking and other violent actors. In the middle of the 20th century, the military dictatorship in Colombia ordered the closure of El Espectador, which had to change its name for a year to continue circulating almost clandestinely. With the 80s came two of the greatest battles that El Espectador has fought. The first was the series of investigations that revealed how Grupo Grancolombiano, the largest economic emporium in the country at that time, fraudulently maneuvered with the money of bank savers. The group’s revenge was to

­ assively withdraw the newspaper’s adverm tising in order to suffocate it economically. And it almost succeeded.

The battles in defense of freedom of expression continue, although some threats have mutated. The second was the crusade against Pablo Escobar, who was a congressman at the time. El Espectador unmasked him and revealed that he was in fact the most


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