- NEW YORK -- Colombian journalist
Ignacio Gomez told a roomful of America's most influential journalists
Tuesday how Washington-supported Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is connected
to drug traffickers and how U.S. military trainers helped organize a massacre
in his country.
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- Among the 1,000 guests at the Committee to Protect Journalists'
annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria grand ballroom were NBC's Tom Brokaw,
CBS's Dan Rather, Time-Warner's Walter Isaacson, Reuters CEO Thomas Glocer
and executives and reporters from the nation's major TV networks, newspapers
and newsmagazines.
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- Gomez, 40, has twice gone into exile after death threats.
The media "stars" applauded him for his courage. But did they
put his revelations into print or on air? If you didn't see the stories
he recounted in the American press, don't be surprised.
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- As they do every year at the CPJ event, "leading"
U.S. journalists lauded the courage of people chancing death for telling
the truth, but continue to pull punches in their own news organizations
for fear of endangering their multi-million-dollar salaries.
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- Here's more of what Gomez unveiled for colleagues.
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- After he investigated a 1997 massacre in Mapiripan, in
which 67 people were decapitated, Gomez reported in 2000 that the Colombian
military officer accused of masterminding the crime had been accompanied
"at all times" by a dozen U.S. military trainers. He also linked
the massacre to paramilitary leader Carlos Castano.
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- Gomez has written frequently about the role of Colombian
military and paramilitary in massacres though Washington downplays their
connection. Several months after the report was published in the Bogota
daily El Espectator, Gomez was almost kidnapped while entering a taxi.
He was forced into exile.
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- Last year, as director of investigations for a public
affairs television show "Noticias Uno," he reported that U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had discovered an airplane belonging
to then-presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe and his brother at a drug lab
belonging to the Medellin cartel.
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- Uribe, eschewing peace talks in favor of a military response
to Colombian rebels - something the Bush administration wants - suffered
no Washington displeasure. But Gomez and the station news director got
death threats, and Uribe declared ominously that "a free press is
one thing, and a press at the service of ... shady deals is something else."
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- As he accepted the CPJ award, Gomez told the audience
that "Colombian journalists first exposed the corruption of the war
on drugs, but because of an information monopoly tied to the current government,
truth is dying in Colombia. We are no longer allowed to be heard."
He said that one of the two national papers and 23 TV news shows had been
shut down.
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- "The picture of war," Gomez said, "is
getting blurry - and Americans, whose taxes and whose drug consumption
fuel this war, should be concerned." He said that seeing the audience,
he felt Colombians were not alone, that they could "still prevail
against the powerful forces who want to keep us mute."
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- Brokaw, Rather, Isaacson and other media chiefs readily
showed up, in black tie, to support the CPJ fundraiser, and their conscience
money is needed. But their commitment might be taken more seriously if
they stopped being "mute" in print and on air about stories -
by Gomez and others - that challenge U.S. policy and actions in Colombia.
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- Copyright 2002 Joe Shea, The American Reporter. All Rights
Reserved.
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- http://www.american-reporter.com/1987/6.html
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