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Reporting in English, a new gate for a global Colombia
If you want to know things from Latin American countries and you do not speak Spanish, you have to rely most of the time in translations or in the reports from journalists who are not either Latin Americans and who get shorts news from far agencies.
In a country like Colombia, information in English is actually little. However, the development of Internet in the last decade is changing it not only for the South American country, but for many developing nations around the world.
Internet is challenging also journalism in the 21rst century. It opened new spaces for discussion and approach to realities. If before it was difficult to test the sources of media and their references, Internet provides a wide range of means to prove if a journalist or media is reporting as most objective possible or is using fake references.
The Internet is not only the space for big corporations like CNN, BCC, Reuters and hundred of powerful nets that seem to monopolize the trends of news around the world, but it creates the possibility for independent systems as well.
A good example is Colombia Reports, a net that was created by Dutch journalist and artist Adriaan Alsema in 2008 as an independent media through the Internet reporting from Medellín downtown. Soon he could get a team made by natives and foreigners. As Internet redesigned the idea of what is an office for our century, the meetings are online joining digital journalists who live in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
In a country like Colombia, information in English is actually little. However, the development of Internet in the last decade is changing it not only for the South American country, but for many developing nations around the world.
Internet is challenging also journalism in the 21rst century. It opened new spaces for discussion and approach to realities. If before it was difficult to test the sources of media and their references, Internet provides a wide range of means to prove if a journalist or media is reporting as most objective possible or is using fake references.
The Internet is not only the space for big corporations like CNN, BCC, Reuters and hundred of powerful nets that seem to monopolize the trends of news around the world, but it creates the possibility for independent systems as well.
A good example is Colombia Reports, a net that was created by Dutch journalist and artist Adriaan Alsema in 2008 as an independent media through the Internet reporting from Medellín downtown. Soon he could get a team made by natives and foreigners. As Internet redesigned the idea of what is an office for our century, the meetings are online joining digital journalists who live in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
"Colombia Reports started as a weblog just to bring Colombian news in English in a way it wasn’t being brought. Even though Colombia is one of the most important countries for U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, the information available to those that don’t speak Spanish was very limited. The only time Colombia would be in the news is when something really good or really bad was happening," said Alsema to Colombia Passport, another English Colombian independent media.Alsema underlined also that importance of the Internet for countries like Colombia:
"When we started in 2008 there was a very polarized discussion about Colombia. Uribe was either God or Satan and the FARC was either a group of liberators or a group of terrorists. Obviously things are a little more complicated like that, but if you do not have access to information you can’t really see the complexities of issues."
The website has become the biggest news source on Colombia in the past year, despite competition and I hope to be able to make a profitable website that adds to a good debate and hopefully improved policies in Colombia, the U.S. and Europe,"Even if languages like Spanish, Chinese, Arab or German play a great part in the global markets of the 21rst century, it is also true that the role of English will become the key of global understanding today by the Internet. Though softwares are developing to make reports translated from the most reduced dialects to the main global languages, information made in English will be a good deal for development.
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