Panel Discusses Reporting in Colombia

Death threats, malicious phone calls and danger are a constant presence in the lives of journalists in Colombia, said four panelists Friday at Harvard Law School's Pound Hall.

"Journalists in Colombia are intimidated," said Andres Cavelier, a Colombian journalist working as a correspondent in Washington, D.C.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), the Human Rights Program, the Harvard Law School and other campus groups sponsored "Writing Under Fire: Freedom of Expression and the Colombian Peace Process," a panel discussion about self-censorship and the ongoing Colombian peace process.

Maria Cristina Caballero, a research editor for Semana Magazine and currently a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, said death threats forced her to leave Colombia.

"The number of death threats now show that enemies are everywhere," she said.

Just after participating in a yearlong journalism program at Harvard in 1996-97, Caballero recalled one of her first stories back in her home country. She was sent to cover a massacre in which more than 30 people were killed, literally "cut in pieces," she said. It was just one example of how journalists are constantly reporting on violence and putting themselves in situations where extremely malicious people are ready to take action, she said.

In covering the violence in Colombia and the attempts at peace, Caballero published a 60-page special in a magazine called Cambia, in which she revealed how so many Colombians "feel they need arms to survive here," she said.

June Erlick, the publications director at DRCLAS, said she became profoundly aware of the restrictions on the press in Colombia when her published interviews of author and journalist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, caused him to seek asylum in Mexico because of death threats.

Erlick, who worked as a foreign correspondent in Colombia from 1975 to 1984 for Time Magazine, the New York Times and the Miami Herald, said that the violence against journalists and their subjects is directed mostly at Colombian citizens.

"As a correspondent I felt safe except for the same things as everyone, such as falling off a cliff on the edge of a road," she said. "I was never afraid for my life in Bogota or traveling through the country and never received a threat. My accent protected me and gave me greater access."

However, she did note that more and more local journalists are finding themselves the targets of threats.

Drugs are one of the main sources of conflict in Columbia, said David Aquila Lawrence, a free-lance journalist for National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC and CNN for the past three years.

"Before I went I had been following the news from here," he said. "My impression was that everything in Colombia was about drugs. It's not excusable but it's quite common. But the violence there also had a political base as well."

He said that he would often visit the site of a massacre immediately following it, and concluded that somehow, everything related back to drugs, but that the influence of drugs isn't as strong as the resulting influence of money.

"Drugs provide the cash flow, and the armed factions benefit from this 'fuel' provided by the United States and Europe by consumption," Lawrence said.

"The rule of law is broken down by the corrupted influence of money," he added. "Everyone has to look out for themselves."

He also agreed that foreign journalists are much safer in Colombia than local ones, as he and journalists like him are not breaking new stories or doing the same type of investigative reporting as someone from the local press.

Moreover, Lawrence said foreign correspondents have to fight to get air time in the American news market.

Lawrence said he often finds himself trying to "sell" the Colombian news to the American public. Occasionally, he said, he has a 45-second segment on NPR or a story in newspapers, but "only if there is no other major news."

Both foreign correspondents and local journalists have an obligation and role in the peace process despite the dangers, Lawrence said. He said their obligation is to try and report the news as close to the truth as possible.

He said some people have the idea that journalists shouldn't report on information that could hurt the peace process, but his response is always that a journalist's responsibility is to inform people, "so people can make an informed choice, knowing what's going on."

The panelists also discussed how journalists react to the violence and threats they receive.

Cavelier described one reaction as what he termed "self-censorship."

Because of threats and imminent danger, seven to 10 prominent Colombian journalists are now in exile. But Cavalier said the nation's press struggles to remain undaunted.

"They receive death threats and phone calls, and in Bogota and in the rest of the country are forced to use self-censorship. But it's our role to tell things as they are and as they happen," he said.