What Does Journalism Owe to Peace? : The Metajournalistic Discourse of Media Failure After Colombia’s 2016 Peace Referendum

Abstract

On Oct. 2, 2016, against all predictions, Colombian voters rejected a proposed peace deal with FARC rebels that would have marked the end of a 50-year-old internal conflict. Similar to what happened after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's election in the United States that same year, the unexpected results of the Colombian peace referendum resulted in a wave of media criticism. This study examines this body of criticism in the Colombian case through qualitative, critical thematic analysis of published media criticism that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the vote and semi-directed interviews with Colombian journalists who personally covered the referendum. The findings show that a metajournalistic discourse of media failure materialized following the vote, with potential implications for the local journalistic culture. Three dimensions are identified in the journalists' responses to this discourse. They acknowledge that errors and poor journalistic habits were present in the vote's coverage; they push back by identifying external pressures to journalism that caused systemic media failures; and they speak with ambivalence about persisting journalistic practices and norms, showing willingness to revisit some of them in their own practice. A discussion based on the findings links theoretical scholarship on the Brexit and Trump's cases to the Colombian vote by showing that the experience of covering the referendum, and the ensuing criticism that the media sustained, opened the door for journalists to engage in a debate over the merits of objectivity, just like the two other cases did in their respective contexts. A situated analysis that takes into account the local context of Colombia's journalistic culture proposes new angles to this debate. It suggests that internal changes in that culture, such as the demise of an organization that used to champion peace activism in journalism, has resulted in changes to how journalists understand and apply the objectivity norm when covering matters of conflict and peace. This raises the question of whether material conditions in any given journalistic context may influence how journalists understand and apply objectivity, thus contributing new insights to the ongoing debate on the merits of this norm not just in the Colombian context but globally as well.