In November 2011, the Colombian military achieved one of its greatest successes when it killed Alfonso Cano, the supreme commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in the southwestern department of Cauca. Cano was quickly replaced by secretariat member Timoleon “Timochenko” Jiménez. With Timochenko believed to be operating in the northeastern department of Norte de Santander, in a remote, drug-producing area known as the Catatumbo region, the primary focus of Colombia’s military operations shifted northward. This part of Colombia is unique because, in addition to the FARC, two other guerrilla groups—the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the People’s Liberation Army (EPL)—operate here.
Author Archives: Garry Leech
Colombia’s Eternal Conflict: Will There Be Peace in Our Time?
Timoleon ‘Timochenko’ Jiménez, new leader of the FARC: call for peace.Timoleon ‘Timochenko’ Jiménez, the supreme commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), opened the New Year by issuing a public statement announcing that the Marxist guerrilla group is willing to engage in peace talks with the Colombian government as long as those negotiations addressed ‘the privatisations, the deregulation, the absolute freedom of trade and investment, the environmental degradation, market democracy, the military doctrine’. In essence, the guerrillas are demanding, as they have done for decades, that any peace agreement would require a public debate about the implementation of the neoliberal, or ‘free-market’, economic model that they so vehemently oppose.
The Hunt for FARC Commander Alfonso Cano
The Colombian military has had numerous successes targeting high-ranking leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in recent years. Its two greatest successes were the killing of secretariat members Raúl Reyes in 2008 and Jorge Briceño, alias “Mono Jojoy,” last year. But the guerrilla leader that the military most wants to capture or kill is the FARC’s supreme commander Alfonso Cano. In an effort to achieve its objective, the Colombian army has deployed 5,000 troops with the sole mission of locating Cano. But the task of tracking down and targeting the FARC leader is proving to be far more challenging than the killing of Reyes and Mono Jojoy due to the high altitude and rugged mountain terrain prevalent in the department of Tolima in central Colombia, where the FARC was founded in 1964.
The Need for Journalistic Bias
Journalists and media outlets have an obligation to raise serious questions about the dominant power structures in the world in which we live and should be open about their ideological perspective in the process. The myth of objectivity that dominates the media (particularly the corporate mainstream media) ultimately only results in a defense of the political, social and economic status quo.
The mainstream corporate media’s claims (particularly in the United States) to being “objective,” non-bias,” “neutral” or “non-ideological” are simply ludicrous. Their news coverage is overwhelmingly dependent on official sources and constantly reflects the accepted norms of a Western liberal democratic and capitalist society. Inevitably then, the mainstream media defends the status quo—which constitutes biased reporting because the existing political, social and economic system under which we live is ideologically based. Therefore, no journalist or media outlet is objective or non-biased.
Alternative media (whether right or left leaning) should work to dispel the myth of objectivity that exists in the mainstream media. The ideological perspective of any journalist or media outlet should be immediately apparent to all readers. It should not be masked by presenting analysis and information as “fact” or the “truth.” The facts and the truth are always open to interpretation, and that interpretation is always influenced by ideology. Given this reality, people need analysis from a variety of ideological perspectives in order to draw their own conclusions and to constantly re-evaluate their own ideological positions.
In the early twentieth century, there were 24 daily newspapers in New York City and each of them presented issues from a particular ideological perspective (conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist, anarchist, social democratic, fascist, etc.). Today, there are four corporate-owned newspapers in the city all claiming to be “objective,” but in reality presenting one ideological perspective: that of the ruling political and economic elites.
This concentration of media over the second half of the twentieth century has occurred throughout the United States and has restricted debate within the narrow parameters of the dominant ideological perspective. For example, the covering of both the Democratic and Republican positions on an issue is presented as non-biased reporting when, in actuality, it merely portrays two relatively similar variants of one ideological perspective while ignoring a whole plethora of others.
The impression of objectivity is achieved through the journalist not directly conveying his or her personal ideological bias in a news piece. However, that bias, along with that of editors, producers and others who impact the final product, is still represented in the choice of topic, sources and structuring (i.e. if more than one perspective is presented, which one appears closest to the beginning of the piece, thereby having more impact).
The mainstream media’s over-reliance on official sources routinely leads to bias in news reporting. During Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s first term in office (2002-2006), the New York Times published 21 news reports that referred to the killing of civilians in Colombia. Seventeen of the reports held the guerrillas responsible for the killings referred to in those articles. In every one of the seventeen articles in which the guerrillas were held responsible, the only sources cited were Colombian government or military officials.
Such a biased presentation is deemed to be objective journalism because it is the Colombian government’s perspective that is presented in the article and not views of the journalist. In all likelihood, casual readers of those news stories about Colombia internalized (either sub-consciously or consciously) the ideological perspective of the Colombian government.
As producers of alternative media, we should not focus our energy on trying to cover all perspectives, since it simply cannot be done. We should also avoid needlessly repeating the perspectives that dominate the mainstream media and instead work to present those perspectives that are too often ignored, thereby broadening the parameters of news and analysis available.
The provision of analysis from an array of ideological perspectives can only result in a better-informed public and healthier debate—and, ultimately, a deeper democracy. But sadly, in our society, journalists in the mainstream media who reflect the ideological views of those in power are too often accepted as being “objective,” while the rest of us who challenge those views are simply dismissed as “ideological” or “biased” or “radical.”
This article was previously published by Colombia Reports
Clinton Revises Colombia’s Drug History to Justify U.S. Military Role in Mexico and Central America
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently compared Mexico’s drug violence to that experienced in Colombia twenty years ago and claimed that drug trafficking networks were “morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America.” President Barack Obama and Mexican government officials were quick to correct her, claiming that the contemporary Mexican reality does not reflect that of Colombia in the late 1980s. What they failed to correct, however, was her misinterpretation, or conscious revision, of Colombia’s history in order to justify an increased U.S. military role in Mexico and Central America.
Garry Leech 