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The Truths of Javier Darío Restrepo, Ombudsman
By Oscar Domínguez G.

Javier Darío Restrepo has all the answers for all the questions about the journalistic trade. He practices a clean hands journalism that has prompted envy in more than one of his colleagues. Journalism has given him stature as a reporter and thinker. He solidified his status of reporter when he won the Simon Bolivar Journalism Prize – one of the most important in Colombia – for his lifetime work.

Javier Darío Restrepo

From the newspaper El Tiempo of Bogota he runs a Sunday school which equally benefits readers and journalists. He has rejected many offers to edit various media because he feels more at ease judging journalism. He's all too outspoken to be a subordinate.

The afternoon I interviewed him he was fresh from a fight with the presidential press office. Since the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of writer Honorato de Balzac was approaching, the dialogue started there.

Pulso del periodismo: Balzac said that if journalism did not exist, there'd be no need to invent it. Was he right or are we journalists so important?

Javier Darío Restrepo: If journalism is seen as a fourth power, Balzac was right. With the view he had of social reality, he understood that journalism as a force was not justified. On the other hand, journalism as a service is irreplaceable. This is precisely the thought of present day journalism, because it is increasingly understood that as a power it cannot continue to exist. As a power, it has been awful and has allied itself with other powers.

The current evolution of journalism is very interesting, starting with something as prosaic as the need to sell its product, and to sell, it has to guarantee to the public that it is worthy of confidence and credibility, and this is based in a service activity tested by society. People buy newspapers, not out of simple curiosity but because they're looking for something that's useful. Between us, this is starting to happen, and the big newspapers in the rest of the world are seriously putting forward service journalism and, as such, indispensable for society.

P.: What obstacles are there on this path?

J.D.R.: I believe that one of these obstacles being felt is the dependency of the various media. There is a chain of dependencies that start with the preoccupation and cult of technology. That idea has been created in many media that if I have cutting edge technology I can more easily sell my product because people, dazzled by the brilliance of technology, are going to want it. The problem is that to have the best and latest technology, you're going to have to make some big financial somersaults. And those somersaults end up making you dependent upon a bank or financial group.

If the media do not replace their passion for technology with imagination and above all commitment to their fundamental function, they're going to end up being dependent. That's where you see in our countries, and particularly in Colombia, the so-called subtle censorship which comes mainly from those who are financing the media.

As well, the media, aware of that train of expenses and dependency and unable to survive just on the fuel from sales and advertising, create other business. The result is all of them demand more money or order to survive and as they grow, they're creating more financial dependence for the media.

I believe that one of the great problems facing the big media in Latin America results from privatization, because they have lost their initial ideals. One remembers Joseph Pulitzer talking of self-sufficient media. But achieving it is not a question of multiplying income but of living with austerity. We journalists are condemned to be austere in order to be independent. Much of the dependency and subtle censorship we ourselves have brought about through the growth of financial dependence.

P.: When you speak of dependency are you alluding to the limitations on freedom of expression?

J.D.R.: Freedom of expression, as the word implies, means that you can express yourself without external limitations, nor internal ones. The external ones are well known: it's as common as a threat, an assassination, the arrival of the military with scissors to cut out an editorial or the news. It's the common part of censorship. There's a more modest form of censorship, which is the one that places legal obstacles, not aimed expressly at the press but indirectly, like what we have just witnessed in Colombia, where under a reformed penal code you could be jailed for revealing part of a legal file.

Remember in the anticorruption statute there's an article that prohibits you from using any information that has anything to do with a trial underway against any official. This is paradoxical: if the first defense against corruption is information, here, in an anticorruption statute, information about the corrupt is forbidden.

Then they want to hold the journalist to the same laws as lawyers, and you know that the proof offered by a lawyer is not the same as the proof offered by a journalist. This occurs the moment a crime has been committed and starts when any citizen observes things. And it is the observation by a journalist, which is not legal proof, that prompts a judicial investigation. The journalist provides the raw material for an investigation. So, all this they want to stop through a legal somersault.

There's another limitation: the games being played with the contracts for television channels. This was particularly evident in the government of President Samper and now the same strategy is showing up as the current administration seeks the abolition of the National television Commission so that the government can manage television, can manage radio, can manage all the media.

P.: What other signs are there of this danger to journalism that is expressed strongly in Colombia?

JDR: I just had a discussion with some people, some from international organizations, who refuse to look at one aspect that restricts freedom of expression: the work conditions of journalists, especially those working in private television. There are some very respected journalists who constantly face the threat of unemployment, in conditions that require them to work weekends without additional pay. But if they don't work, they run the risk of being replaced and left jobless.

When I look at examples of people who are reporting on television and who are in these conditions, I find a journalist who does not have freedom to inform because there is always dangling over his neck the sword of unemployment and poor pay. But if I add to this the fact that 80 percent of Colombians say they receive their main news from television, we arrive at the following conclusion: a population that is being informed by people unable to produce unrestricted news. This is a worrisome sign of the deterioration of democracy, which is only achieved through an informed public, and 80 percent of Colombians are being informed by television, and television news is not unrestricted.

P.: What is the role of the print media, which must look after the remaining 20 percent?

JDR: Without being perfect, the written press is fulfilling its role with much more decorum. There's greater opportunity for analysis, there is certain independence and above all there is certain tradition of passion for the trade.

You've never seen in the written press good salaries. A journalist in any daily or magazine receives modest pay and there's no horrible competition for the big salaries seen in radio and television. Besides, you'll find more time for reflection, and the bewitchment of the written word, which has its own power, forces you to reflect, to study, to confront sources.

The devilish pace in television makes it almost impossible for a reporter to challenge sources in a calm search for the truth behind the news. On the other hand, this exists in the print media.

And in the written media, you see there is a difference inasmuch as there people feel more obliged to dig deeper and specialize in certain areas. Increasingly one sees print media that are hiring specialists to do this. Another positive aspect that I see is teamwork.

I think that the print media are producing better and more reliable news, which the country currently needs.

P.: This situation that you describe in the Colombian press, is it just here or generalized throughout Latin America?

JDR: I have the impression that it is occurs throughout Latin America, that we're part of the end of the millennium where things are changing. Even more, I don't think television has a clearly defined future in the new millennium. If you look at the growing importance of all the information media, the cyberspace navigation, you're going to realize how people are undervaluing television and are seeking news on the Internet and the other media that the computer offers, so that the future of television is not guaranteed. Nor is the future guaranteed for the print media, unless it's as an information service. Increasingly people are finding more utility in a small media, technologically backward but independent, that interprets the community. Increasingly people need more talk about their neighbors and less about other continents.

P.: I'd like you to speak a bit more about ethics. From a journalistic perspective, are we journalists now more or less ethical?

JDR: The same thing is happening in journalism as is happening at a world level, that is, a conscience has been forming that has made one thing clear: we live on a planet in eruption in which a type of ethics of survival is being imposed. When I speak to you of ethics of the survivors, I am referring to that survival pact that is the basis for the respect of certain norms. Those who survive on a raft, though they might be anarchists at heart and in spirit, have to conform to certain rules because, if they don't, they know they will drown. The world is in a similar situation. It is a type of raft on which we have to accept certain norms, what is called the civil ethic that is not based on any religious principle but is based on a need recognized by everyone: if we don't accept those norms, we prejudice everyone.

The same thing is happening in journalism. One thing is increasingly clear in journalism: either you tell the truth and have proof to back it up or you damage your media. People have the right to expect you to accurately tell the truth. Today they even talk of the scientific accuracy of the journalist. Alongside that requirement is the growing belief that the journalist has to be independent. Look at the vehement way in which the readers of demand it of a newspaper like El Tiempo. They say: "You are the owners of the newspaper but we’re the owners of the information. Therefore, you have no right to use the information to promote your own businesses."

P.: We speak a lot of freedom of expression that extends out from the journalist, but the reader, listener and viewer also have a right to exercise freedom of expresion. However, it appears that there is not sufficient means for the people to express themselves.

JDR: Yes, there are not enough means, but more are being created all the time. If you listen in the morning to the two big radio networks, RCN and Caracol, you'll note a change. Before, they'd wait until around 9:30 for what was the voice of the listeners and there you heard four or five letters. Now, right from the beginning of the newscast, they mix in letters from listeners.

As far as newspapers are concerned, there have been two new aspects this year. Besides publishing daily letters to the editor, El Espectador is dedicating a weekly page in order to publish more letters. Besides publishing letters on pages four and five, El Tiempo once a week drops columnists from page five and leaves the space entirely for letters. As well, the motor section dedicated to cars also has a letters page, as do sections on computers, cattle and economy. Of course, the ombudsman has his page of letters, all of which shows there has been a growing conscience on the part of the media to open space for readers.

On the other hand, you don’t find this on television, where there's no such open participation by viewers, except now and then when a program opens its telephones on the air. The news programs don't have this type of exchange.

P.: The media have started to compete with a cyberspace intruder called the Internet. How will the Internet affect the future of the media?

JDR: If the media don't worry about gaining credibility and offering services that compete with credibility and with the Internet, they can be easily replaced, at least in part, by direct news from the Internet.

P.: Do you think that governments continue attacks on freedom of expression through organizations set up to propagate the official truth?

JDR: I think it's a condition of governments to give information that is never complete. The exercise of power creates certain limitations on knowledge and perception of reality. The question isn't so much them as the independent media. It would be tragic if the independent media decided to cut costs and reduce their efforts by passively agreeing to all the news that reached them from the centers of power. Democracy would be seriously threatened that day because it's almost axiomatic that news from a center of power is incomplete news. I don't say it's false, it's just incomplete. If the president is on a trip, the best news is that produced by what he says and his program of activities. If you stray from that and interpret what the trip means, the tone, the emphasis of the various speeches, the presidential aides will think you're in opposition, when what you're doing is only interpreting the facts, which is a role of the independent media. The citizenry needs that help. [Italian thinker Guido] Pitigrilli says you know a person when you see him come down the stairs. You have to look under the stairs, not just at the head of the stairs. You have to look at them as human beings who are temporarily in office and at times they have to hold on so as not to fall. That is what a journalist does. State journalism is incomplete journalism, blind journalism that obliges society to walk with a cane. What independent journalism does is give society the means to walk on its own feet.

P.: Summing up, would you say that freedom of expression in Colombia and Latin America is going through a good or bad moment?

JDR: It's going through a bad period in America. During a journalism congress that took place during the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, the panorama painted in all countries was impressive. I don't think this is a good time for the press in the continent, as it is not in Colombia, where there are many restrictions. I'm not surprised. I would be surprised if journalism passively accepted this situation. After all, freedom is something that has to be won on a daily basis. The greater conscience there is on the need for liberty, the greater vision of the obstacles that block it. To say that there is press freedom at this time in America, or in Colombia, would be worrisome because it would mean the journalist's feelings for the need of freedom have diminished.

(Oscar Domínguez is the editor of Colprensa, the Colombian news Agency. His columns have appeared in many Colombian media)

(June 21, 1999)