Reporting was restricted by the remoteness of the war zones and the military’s control of access. Peace is allowing a new approach

Like many urban Colombians, Nicolás Sánchez – a young journalist from the country’s capital, Bogotá – never saw the country’s civil war firsthand. Instead, he grew up watching it from afar, in television reports of massacres and gun battles deep in the countryside.

Reporters would often only show the point of view of the military – the only group who could regularly grant them access to the battlefield. Rural Colombians, who bore the brunt of conflict, were often ignored; coverage instead focused on urban incidents such as kidnappings of public figures and attacks against government buildings.

Media would also turn a blind eye to military atrocities. When members of the army in 2002 began abducting and murdering civilians in an effort to boost their body counts, it went largely unreported for six years.

A peace deal signed with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc) rebel group in late 2016 formally ended 52 years of bitter war that left 260,000 dead and more than 7 million displaced. But unrest continues, as other armed groups seek to muscle in on former Farc territory.

Now, a project is seeking to change how the conflict is covered, taking reporters to far-flung corners of the country, and giving a voice to those caught in the crossfire.

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Colombia 2020, launched in early 2016 with funding from the European Union, aims not only to report on the transition from war to peace, but to educate a nation on what led its citizens to kill each other for generations.

“It’s easy to think that Colombia is like a gringo movie with good guys and bad guys – that every guerrilla is a monster in the jungle,” Sánchez said in the newsroom of El Espectador, the country’s oldest newspaper. “But Colombia is a country where war is a way of life for children … we have ask ourselves, why is that the case?”

As the scars of war are revealed in tribunals, Sánchez and his colleagues are documenting the successes and failures of the peace process – and shedding light on a conflict that was often far from the consciousness of many Colombians.

Colombia's hidden victims finally get their day in court Read more

“We can’t cover it all from the capital,” said Sánchez. “We have to go and talk to the people living there because if we don’t understand the dynamics of the war, we can’t get rid of the dynamics of war.”

Reporting in Colombia still carries risks. Sánchez recently had to cancel a trip to Catatumbo, a lawless region on the border with Venezuela currently disputed by two smaller rebel groups, after local sources advised it would be too dangerous. Earlier, he had to run from a shootout that broke out in Tumaco, a Pacific coast city rife with drug traffickers.

Gloria Castrillón, the project’s head, previously spent decades covering the war’s brutality. “I’ve seen the aftermath of massacres, heard the survivors speak of how they were abused and raped … while we journalists were smeared as being allied with the rebels,” she said.

One of Colombia 2020’s goals has been to change the language used to report conflict, Castrillón said. “During the war, we would only have access to remote regions if we travelled with the military, and of course that would skew our perspective, down to the words we used to describe skirmishes and combatants,” she said. Colombia’s mainstream media would often downplay massacres carried out by state-aligned paramilitaries, referring to them simply as “murders”, she said.

Another challenge has been building trust with local sources who have long been suspicious of major media companies in Colombia.

“Building those links with people out in the field has been our biggest challenge,” said Natalia Herrera, the platform’s content editor. “But it’s also one of the things we are most proud of: giving a voice to these people.”

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