A Look Into the Medias Role Within the FARC in Colombia

Tatiana Zuniga
INR 4084: Politics of International Terrorism
November 10, 2016
 Over the span of a few decades, the FARC in Colombia was known as the main

terrorist group within the country, but the group along with the Colombian government

wants to put that stigma to rest. On September 26th 2016, steps were taken between the

Colombian government and the FARC to sign an agreement in order to restore the peace

within the country and end the 52-year-long war. Under the agreement restoring the peace

required: the FARC to give their weapons to United Nations inspectors, members of the

FARC could go back to living as regular Colombians amongst the population, and some

leaders and soldiers within the FARC would be given amnesty or reduced sentences for

their crimes.1 In order to implement the agreement and move forward the government

implemented a referendum that allowed the Colombian citizens to vote for or against the

agreement. With a 50.2% to 49.8%, a difference of fewer than 54,000 votes out of

almost 13 million cast, the peace agreement was voted down.2 Despite having support

from the government and individuals within the country, the agreement that was aimed at

moving the country forward was ultimately rejected. This paper will analyze how the

media played a role throughout the FARCs duration and how that role continued into the

peace negotiations.

In Inside Terrorism, Bruce Hoffman says all terrorist groups have one trait in

common: they do not commit actions randomly or senselessly. Each wants maximum

publicity to be generated by its actions3 It is true that many groups want attention and

their actions to be conveyed in the media, the FARCs main purpose for existence was to

1 Nicholas Casey, Colombia Signs Peace Agreement with FARC After 5 Decades of War
(New York Times 2016).

2 Sibylla Brodzinsky, Colombia referendum: voters reject peace deal with FARC
guerillas (The Guardian 2016).
3 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2006), 173.
push for change because they felt that they were not being represented in the political

realm and in order to push for change their actions had to be demonstrated to the public

through the use of media outlets. Terrorist organizations and the media need one another

in order to push their respective agendas; without news to report, the media would not

have much to talk about and without their actions being publicized terrorist organizations

would have a hard time displaying their message to the world.

The media has a big influence because if the public is not seeing the violence

first-hand they are hearing about the events from any source who reports on the issues

happening around them and in most cases the tone used in those reports affects the

publics perception. In the 2013 article Five Issues Troubling the Ongoing Colombia

FARC Peace Talks, the reporter Trent Boultinghouse says Much of the Colombian

population certainly wants to take Mrquez (and indeed President Juan Manuel Santos)

seriously in their attempts to rectify a violent and bloody civil war that has intermittently

rocked the country with waves of murderous kidnappings and drug trafficking

encounters."4 The media is always looking to sensationalize their stories, although the

issues they are reporting on are factual, the descriptive words such as violent and bloody

civil war and murderous kidnappings plants an image into the readers mind. Not

everyone interprets a story the same, some can see it as a regular part of war while others

may take it to another level. The medias intention of sensationalism coupled with the

publics fear of the ongoing events around them can sometimes lead to a story being more

frightening than it really is. The news media is not the only group with the capability of

pushing their own agenda and relaying a story to further that agenda, anyone who has

4 Trent Boultinghouse, Five Issues Troubling the Ongoing Colombia FARC Peace
Talks (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 2013).
access to any form of media whether it is news outlets, websites, or social media can use

that platform to reach a large audience and deliver a story.

Terrorists groups themselves have access to relay their message to the public

using the media to portray their side of the story, this being done within the FARC. The

FARC has their own website that functions as their platform for communication, in one

section of their website they have a story titled Media's version vs. FARC's version, in this

segment they have a story showing the perspective of the news outlet and the perspective

of the FARC. In the news medias version of the story it is written On March 19, 2015, a

press release by the national army denounced that indigenous people in Corinto, Cauca,

didnt allow them to capture a chief of finances and drug-trafficking of the sixth front of

the FARC-EP and underneath they have the FARCs version.5 The FARCs version gives

a long explanation of how the Colombian army went into a farm where indigenous people

were living and started threatening them with weapons while a military aircraft was

shooting from above. Similar to the news medias way of using descriptive language to

relay their message, the FARC employs that tactic as well by stating The shootings from

the aircrafts drew the attention of a group of guerrilla fighters of the FARC-EP who

decide to confront those who dared to attack a poor indigenous family.6 The phrase who

dared to attack a poor indigenous family, made the FARC seem very noble in wanting to

interfere with the situation in order to protect the individuals from the Colombian

military. Hoffman notes, In recent years, the art of terrorist communication has evolved

to a point at which the terrorists themselves can now control the entire production

process, this is seen through the FARCs websitethey are choosing the internet to

5 Media's version vs. FARC's version (Farc-Epeace 2015).

6 Ibid.,
deliver their news and posting their own stories.7 The group using the descriptive

language is always going to use words or phrases to make themselves look good and the

other side intimidating. In the past, the news outlets used to be the main reporters on

terrorist activities, but now the terrorists themselves have started sharing their point of

view writing their own stories for the public to read as a way to gain sympathizers or

recruit new members.8

Seeing the FARC describe the events of intervening to help the indigenous family and

reading the words of Boultinghouse from the earlier article describing them as violent

and murderous9 makes it seem like two separate groups are being described. The way a

story is portrayed has a lot of influence on how individuals perceive the situation; the

reason why the story from the media and the story by the FARC does not seem as if it is

the same group being mentioned is because both sides are warping the narrative to push

their agenda. The media affects terrorism, news media is going to sensationalize stories

and cause the public to perceive terrorism as a greater threat than it really is, while the

FARC would portray themselves as freedom fighters that were standing up for their

beliefs. The sensationalism of the FARC in Colombia could be seen as a contributing

factor to the peace deal results, the peace deal was supposed to be a way for the country

to move on and end the decades long war, but it was ultimately voted down. Since the

FARC was always in the media and many of the horrible things done by them have been

widely broadcasted, individuals could not bring themselves to pardon the group after

reading and seeing what they have done to the country.

7 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 197.

8 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 225.
9 Boultinghouse, Five Issues Troubling the Ongoing Colombia FARC Peace Talks
The news media outlets and the FARC were not the only ones using the media to advance

their message; political elites within Colombia, specifically the former president, Alvaro

Uribe contributed to pushing his agenda through the use of the media. The media plays a

big role in terrorism because it is fairly easy for anyone to have access to the public

through the use of the media to portray a message. Uribe who is currently a member of

congress in Colombia led the campaign to vote no against the peace deal. He was able to

gain a big following through the use of social media, Uribe uses Twitter like a general

uses artillery, often many times a day, in order to react to news, quarrel with other

politicians and with journalists, and generally make his presence felt.10 The use of social

media is an effective way in todays society to express a message because even if one

does not have a social media account, their friends and family can tell them about what is

happening on social media.

The media is always going to be able to affect terrorism because of the easy accessibility

and openness for anyone to use. It can be used as a tool to sensationalize terrorism and

alert the public or it can be used for terrorists to portray themselves how they perceive

their actions and defend against the news that goes against them. It is fair because anyone

can use it but it is also unfair the messages are not always truthful and can be biased

against a certain side while reaching a large audience. The medias role within the FARC

negotiations with Colombian leaders shows how opposing sides can be commenting on

the same issue but with different perspectives. Regardless of the differing views between

the media and terrorist groups, both sides rely on the other to further their agendas and

impact situations.

10 Jon Lee Anderson, How Colombias Voters Rejected Peace (The New Yorker, 2016).
 Bibliography

Anderson, Jon Lee How Colombias Voters Rejected Peace The New Yorker, 2016.

Boultinghouse, Trent Five Issues Troubling the Ongoing Colombia FARC Peace
Talks Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2013.

Brodzinsky, Sibylla Colombia referendum: voters reject peace deal with FARC
guerillas The Guardian, 2016.

Casey, Nicholas Colombia Signs Peace Agreement with FARC After 5 Decades of
War New York Times, 2016

Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Media's version vs. FARC's version Farc-epeace.org. Last modified 2016.

https://farc-epeace.org/background/item/701-media-vs-farc.html