Special Reports

Distorted Perceptions of Colombia’s Conflict

In a civil conflict such as the one in Colombia, propaganda is an important weapon. It is difficult for journalists and analysts to independently investigate the reality on the ground and so statistics and information are obtained from a variety of sources in order to draw conclusions. However, the mainstream media in the United States is often over-reliant on two sources: Colombian and US government officials. Not surprisingly then, it is the perspectives of the Colombian and US governments that inevitably dominate most news reports. By comparing conflict trends and human rights statistics with media coverage of Colombia’s violence, it is possible to understand why and how the public’s perception of the conflict has been distorted. Read more»

Contested Country: An Examination of Current Propaganda Techniques in the Colombian Civil War

Colombia’s civil war has spanned more than four decades and propaganda is an important weapon for all the armed actors in the country’s armed conflict. The conflict’s roots lie in the incomplete project of creating the Colombian state after the 19th Century defeat of Spanish colonialism, and in the 20th Century political rivalries of two elite political parties whose increasingly violent internecine feuds—referred to simply as la Violencia—ignored the backwardness and socioeconomic marginalization of Colombia’s rural poor, for whom the state was largely a distant abstraction only occasionally visited upon them. Colombia’s government has never controlled all of the Colombian territory, in part due to the country’s rugged geography of soaring Andean mountain ranges and dense Amazonian jungles. Read more»