“Estuve dispuesta a entregarles mi nombre, pero no mi fe en el oficio”

A Colombian journalist has spoken publicly about the intense harassment she faced during recent political campaigns, describing how her name became a target of attacks while her professional integrity remained intact. She recounted being willing to give up her name but not her belief in her profession. The accusations against her were part of a broader campaign aimed at undermining her credibility and that of her organization, La Silla Vacía, which she co-founded. The journalist described how, during her time studying in the United States at age 18, people often mentioned Pablo Escobar whenever she mentioned she was from Colombia. Her reaction was to highlight the shared responsibility of others, and the thousands who had been killed. Years later, after returning to pursue her master’s degree, she came to the realization that she did not need to defend the name of Colombia itself, Colombia could defend itself. This sense of liberation carried over into her experiences during the recent election campaign. During these difficult months, she found herself facing personal attacks that went beyond mere criticism. She moved from thinking of her name as a heritage worth protecting at all costs to concluding that defending it was an impossible task given the forces working against her. She stated that nothing anyone said about her, whether positive or negative, could change what she had done, how she had done it, or who she was. She described the emotional toll of reading thousands of posts where her image was circulated with derogatory labels such as “bandida,” “mercenary of journalism,” and “corrupt press commissioner.” One user named “paracoloco” even threatened her life. There were also misogynistic comments and hashtags like #LaSillaDeMontar and #LaSillaDelUberrimo, which included sexually degrading imagery. The attacks also included false accusations about the business activities of her family, including profiling of some family members, some of whom have since died. These incidents were the result of an alleged investigation conducted by the magazine Raya, directed by Edinson Bolaños, in collaboration with the RTVC channel of Hollman Morris. This investigation followed their own reporting on the mention of Ivan Cepeda in the computers of the FARC. The alliance between these media outlets, which received more than 2.5 billion pesos in funding from public funds over the past two years, published 47 audiovisual contents and 66 posts on the platform X linking La Silla Vacía to supposed political influence and electoral manipulation under the project known as Operation Jupiter. These publications reached wide public circulation. Only the posts on X accumulated over 840,000 views, without counting the reach generated through open television, public radio, digital platforms, and other channels belonging to the Public Media System. The smear campaign was further amplified by the campaign led by Abelardo de la Espriella. For the first time in over two decades of practicing journalism, she felt fear due to the harassment she endured. It was paradoxical that two journalists, Morris and Bolaños, who themselves had suffered persecution from power during the Uribe government, ended up using their privileged positions to stigmatize journalists uncomfortable with the powers that paid them. While journalists can make mistakes, she argued, in this case, several facts made it clear that it was not simply an error. When Bolaños called one Saturday afternoon asking for her version of events for a story to be published the next day, she provided a link to a course on democracy they were offering to companies, which was supposedly the vehicle for the electoral restriction they accused them of. She had some hope that once he saw it, he would understand it was a general explanation about what the Senate and Chamber do, about the separation of powers, and how to identify disinformation. But Bolaños didn’t even take the trouble to open the link.