After the demonstrations in Colombia called by the Gustavo Petro government on 18 March, the mass media did not recognise their massive scale.
Germán Ayala Osorio
The Noticias Caracol news programme, for example, avoided as much as possible making reference to the number of people who came out to march in the country’s main cities. About the concentration of demonstrators in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, they barely let slip the term ‘full’. It was most likely a slip of the tongue.
In the records of the tours made by the journalists, Caracol Noticias showed images of ‘lone’ walkers, without expressing any description, hoping that the audiences would believe in this fragment of reality constructed journalistically through the eye of the camera. On other occasions, the same news programme and other media companies have gone to great lengths to calculate the number of people who could fit into the Plaza de Bolívar. In 2023, on the occasion of the marches of the Opposition (to the current government), the daily El Espectador recorded the event as follows: “This is how the march of the opponents of Gustavo Petro was experienced in Bogotá. More than 2,500 opponents exercised their right to demonstrate against the current government. The opposition gathered at 9:00 in the morning in the National Park and marched peacefully towards the Plaza de Bolivar. This is how this day was experienced in the country’s capital”.
I had already warned in a previous column: the editorial guideline was to downplay the impact of the demonstrations, focusing on acts of vandalism, which unfortunately happened, and avoiding describing the marches. In the end, they fulfilled the objective of avoiding at all costs to magnify the demonstrations, that is, to avoid describing them as grandiose, monumental, multitudinous, profuse, enthusiastic or frenzied.
At least that was the way the news treatment was presented by these news programme in its midday broadcast on 18 March (18M). Several analysts, all critical of the government and close to the Establishment, were invited to the evening broadcast. The shared reading among the invited academics is that the 2026 presidential campaign has already begun.
The question that arises is: apart from the hegemonic media, which official or private organisations have the technical and political capacity to recognise and validate what happened in the country’s 18 March marches? The question makes sense knowing that the hegemonic press is on the side of Fenalco (an association that defends traders) and the other sectors of political and economic power that oppose all the social reforms presented by the Petro government to the Congress of the Republic.
I insist that youtubers, influencers and the so-called ‘bodegas petristas’ (supporters of President Petro) must work in a better way to counteract the self-censorship engaged in by Noticias Caracol and build a solid narrative that demonstrates that, indeed, the call to the people by the President was a resounding success and that the road to the Referendum is clear.
I do not know if the state of public opinion – favourable or unfavourable to the call for the referendum and to the government itself – is generated today exclusively on social media, a scenario that seems to be better managed by the Petro government’s friends and supporters, compared to the ways in which the government’s opponents and enemies use them.
I emphasize: one cannot underestimate the power of penetration of news channels such as Caracol and RCN, whose broadcasts are heard and seen in restaurants, hairdressers, airports and hospitals, among other places. There is an adult population that is informed only by these two media.
El Espectador, which is also part of the brotherhood of media that politically oppose Petro, recorded the marches with a sparse headline that follows Noticias Caracol’s line of minimising the impact and visibility of the marches: “18M marches: after Petro’s intervention, Plaza de Bolívar begins to empty”. This last verb suggests they implicitly recognise that this public space has indeed been filled. Refusing to give a number is a form of self-censorship.
The headline in Semana magazine goes in the same direction as the one published by the Bogotá daily: “March 18 marches, live: In Bogotá and Cali there were some acts of vandalism in the marches called by Petro”.
Giving visibility to the violent acts over the demonstrations was part of the media strategy.
El Colombiano, a Uribista media outlet (sympathetic to former president Alvaro Uribe) that has been fiercely opposing Petro, did the same.
In the centre of the front page of the Antioquia daily, the following headline reads: “Minute by minute: 18M Marches: ‘The mobilisation will be permanent, the popular consultation is beginning’: Petro”. Another note also appears with this headline: ‘Petro gives speech against senators, mayors and businessmen: “If they don’t accept the referendum, people will remove them from Congress’’. By focusing on what the president said, the large number of citizens’ participation is pushed into the background, prioritising the presidential “threat” and thus contributing to the consolidation of the idea that the president is the only one who polarises. Of course, all of the above-mentioned media avoided describing the mobilisations as grandiose, forceful, massive or multitudinous. They worked in coordination to recreate a social and political reality contrary to the president’s intentions.
(Translated by Rene Phelvin – Email: renephelvin@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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