Colombia: Media Ownership Concentration and Violence against Journalists in the Landscape

Colombia has an increasingly concentrated media system, in which traditional media companies, owned by large corporations, continue to have an important impact on the public agenda. This chapter explains the main characteristics and developments of Colombian media and describes major challenges and opportunities confronted by the national media system. Historical economic and social factors have facilitated the ownership accumulation of Colombian media. In the early 2000s, there was a series of movements in the industry with the emergence of independent/digital-native media, most of them initiated by journalists and entrepreneurs who came from traditional media and saw the need to open new spaces to report and investigate political, economic, social, and community issues that were not of interest to the traditional mainstream media. The fact that social media, private chats, and other digital platforms are facilitating the spread of misinformation is a growing concern for users in Colombia.