WAN-IFRA stands with AMI Colombia as threats against the press escalate
According to our member association AMI, security alerts led to the evacuation of Caracol Televisión, Caracol Radio, RCN and Semana in Bogotá. AMI also reports continuing threats and acts of violence against journalists in different regions of Colombia, and public statements targeting media outlets and reporters. As AMI points out, these are separate events, but they raise a common question: what place does Colombia give its press?
AMI notes that public stigmatisation of journalism and violence against it, particularly in the regions, have reached alarming levels in recent years, and that the IAPA’s Chapultepec Index places Colombia among the countries where press freedom indicators have deteriorated the most. AMI’s figures show that more than 2,000 attacks were recorded against hundreds of journalists between August 2022 and July 2026, including ten murders, four of them in 2026. On average, according to AMI, a journalist is threatened every two days.
Press freedom and the right to information are not privileges of the people who report the news. They are guarantees that belong to citizens, who need a diversity of voices to understand what is happening and form their own opinions. When threats against journalists and media outlets create a climate of intimidation that leads to censorship and self-censorship, society as a whole has the most to lose.
WAN-IFRA joins AMI in calling on the Colombian authorities to:
- adopt concrete public policies that protect the practice of journalism, with protection mechanisms and guarantees that outlast any single government;
- reconsider the language they use about media outlets and journalists. The words of people in positions of authority carry more weight than those of any other public actor. They can build a climate of respect for those who inform society, or one of contempt.
Pluralism cannot be imposed by decree. It grows when criticism is accepted as a normal part of democracy and a diversity of voices is understood to strengthen both those who govern and those who are governed. A society that respects differing opinions, promotes media pluralism and guarantees the free exercise of journalism is a safer society.
