09:43 AM
While the president congratulated the hacker Julian Assange for his freedom —famous for revealing correspondence from the United States Department of State—, attacked the journalists María Jimena Duzán and Ricardo Ospina in three trills. Before that, the president cited another violent tweet from a tweeter who described the media as “paramilitary” and then ended up calling the press generally “Mossad,” referring to the Israeli intelligence agency famous for operations around the world.
“Assange’s eternal imprisonment and torture was an attack on press freedom on a global scale,” Petro said early Wednesday morning. His immediately subsequent trill was: “Mr. Ricardo Ospina, why don’t you put the date of the SAE thefts? Does it bother you to do so? Does it bother you to point out that the SAE was stolen in the Duque Government and not in the Petro Government? Does it mislead the reader? Is that repeated about ‘magistrates evacuated in helicopters’, which turned out to be a real lie and scoundrel?” wrote the president against the director of Blu Radio’s information service.
The trill following that put a target on the journalist and columnist of Cambio Magazine, María Jimena Duzán. “I have respected María Jimena in her journalistic life, I consider her a true journalist and victim of paramilitary violence. But following Vicky’s career is a path of mistakes and lies. Insinuating that I exchange positions in my government for advice is truly disrespectful to myself. Semana magazine already disrespects me to no end, but I don’t expect it from María Jimena. I know that “Mossad journalism” prevails. “They want to destroy Sarabia just to destroy the government and commit villainy and scoundrels,” she added.
What is evident is that the president has a standard for celebrating press freedom in the world, in cases like that of Assange, with all the flats and the debate around the crime of which he was accused; espionage, but another to condemn with adjectives that put the work of journalism in Colombia at risk, especially when he is critical of his administration. This was also said by the Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP), which published another statement asking the president for moderation and respect for the practice of journalism.
“We ask the IACHR’s Special Rapporteur for Freedom of the Press to draw attention to the situation in its dialogues with the executive branch.The need to move forward in the materialization of a real commitment to press freedom by President Gustavo Petro, which includes those voices that are critical of his management,” Flip highlighted.
This is not the first time that Petro has directly attacked the press; He has also done it with EL COLOMBIANO. But it does show that today the only media outlet with which Petro seems to have a respectful relationship is with RTVC, which is directed by his personal friend Hollman Morris, and which has become a spokesperson for the administration, ignoring the difference between being a media at the service of the Government and one at the service of the State.
The easy way out of chats
The president has argued, like the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency (DAPRE), Laura Sarabia, that the accusations, questions and stories about the division in his Government and the case of Andrés Sarabia correspond to simple “WhatsApp chat chains.” However, the sources in the Presidency themselves assure that the distrust of the environment of the director of the DAPRE and the first lady, Verónica Alcocer, towards the director of the National Protection Unit (UNP), Augusto Rodríguez, is real.
EL COLOMBIANO spoke with four independent sources in the Palace who confirmed that distance and resentment, to the point that the Unit had to come out to recognize that the head of the Presidency’s security requested a replacement for the UNP bodyguards who were part of the first lady’s scheme. Regarding the case of Andrés Sarabia, it is true that until now there is no sufficient evidence against him of improper or illegal actions, but the revelations in the press in recent days do leave valid questions. For example, this newspaper stated that Sarabia had claimed in March of this year to be working in private process consultancy with businessman Hernando Salazar for the company Desmarginalisar. But Hernandez denied it. “I know him, but he has not worked with me,” he told this medium.
Until now he has not explained in detail his relationship with Andrés Ávilaformer director of the Special Assets Company (SAE) of the Duque Government, with whom he met in an office on 94th Street, as revealed by the newspaper El Tiempo. Nor with the businessman from Barranquilla David Cure, to which Ávila acknowledged that the senior official’s brother also provides advice. Finally, Sarabia’s relationship with the president of Findeter, Juan Carlos Muñiz, has not been detailed.
You can read: La Flip made a harsh call to Petro: “it intends to sow doubt about the suitability of the media”
Sarabia denied all the accusations against him and filed a complaint for indirect insult. And, although the president assured in an event of promotions of generals of the Military Forces that the WhatsApp chains sought to divide his Government, the first lady denounced last Friday undetermined people in the Prosecutor’s Office who, according to her, would seek to harm her with false information to relate it to the National Risk Management Unit. Alcocer said in his complaint that these people would be officials within the Government, not external or “Nazi” third parties as the president expressed in another message from his X account.
The analysis of Petro’s responses to journalistic publications against his Government shows that the president has not guaranteed that the press reviews what is happening in his administration, but always responds with a dangerous and violent tone. This is what he did with journalist Ricardo Calderón when he published investigations into the visits of his brother, Juan Fernando Petro, to La Picota prison, and also about the relationship during Sonia Bernal’s campaign with Sandra Navarro in Casanare, the latter couple. of a convicted drug trafficker. He has also done so against the director of Semana Magazine for the publications of Day Vásquez and Nicolás Petro and at this stage he decided to appeal to compare the press to an Israeli intelligence agency. The president has said that he is a democrat on repeated occasions, but his statements about the press are increasingly worryingtaking to the limit the messages that may encourage violent acts against journalists or media.
