Colombia Plural is a new independent, peripheral and diverse mass communication media with an incidence called to the Colombian national public opinion from the construction of territorial narratives that they are the reflex of the human, political and cultural diversity of the country.
Colombia Plural is an independent project impelled by the corporation Territory, Identity and Culture for Peace –PACIPAZ (Corporación Territorio, Identidad Y Cultura para la Paz) in alliance with Human Rights Everywhere (HREV), and foundation Spaces of Coexistence and Social development-FUNDESCODES (Fundación Espacios de Convivencia y Desarollo Social) besides the corporation of Support to Popular Communities –CODACOP (Corporación de Apoyo a Comunidades Populares).
Organization
For its operation, Colombia Plural is provided with this organizational structure that guarantees its independence and stability.
- Board for Coordination: Formed by PACIPAZ, HREV, FUNDESCODES y CODACOP
- Board of Partners: Formed by allied organizations, networks and partners of Colombia Plural
- Editorial Board: formed by the professional team of the communication media
- Open Forums: These are not only thought as a way of information sharing of Colombia Plural with the communities, but also a space for the critical debate and the consolidation or proposals.
- Civic Consultant: This is a mechanism of exceptional participation. It might be summoned by request of the Editorial Board and the board for coordination, when the decision making needs of a very wide opinions diversity
Principles
- Independence: understood to mean the aptitude to make autonomous decisions as for the content, its hierarchy and/or the treatment of this one. This aptitude is not absolute, but it is always in dispute and increasing in agreement with the project as it is more solid in the economic and the professional issue.
- Commitment to the common good: We understand the information as a common good and bet on stimulating the exercise of the right to communicate. In other words, Colombia Plural, works with a ‘raw material’ that is not of its ownership, but of the common good: the information.
- Commitment to the territories: the war in Colombia has been territorial and the peace, if constructed, it also will have to put down roots in the territories. Colombia Plural is supposed to be one more bridge to assure that the urban country and, in many cases, unknowledgeable on the otherness of this nation multinational, it meets ‘the other’, to ‘the others” who live in territories with an identity and a few distinguishing cultural, political and economic characteristics
- A vector for the political solution of the conflicts: it is not a task of a way to solve the conflicts, but to show the deep structure of these ones and to decide to feel more importance the search of political solutions rather than to light the wick of the violence. The media are a determinant vector to foster the war or to construct peace.
- Visibilization: Colombia Plural does not do apology for any human group, movement and organization, but it considers that it’s a duty to visibilizate many of those persons and groups historically ‘erasures ‘of the informative agenda of the country, especially the unknown ethnic groups in all its dimensions. Conceptually, it is about referring the real Colombia, that one beyond the «official» Colombia.
- Intellectual honesty: the persons who approach to Colombia Plural will always know since what position we produce information. Namely, we believe neither in the objectivity nor in the neutrality, but in the professional work that contributes all the possible information (in quantity and diversity) but from a position already expressed in the writing of these principles.
- Decolonial Approach: We want the decolonial spirit guides us in the critical process of progress and learning. We are aware of the media and journalistic model we have been formed by it is colonial, in all its aspects (on being, knowing, and doing). That’s why, we bet on the decoloniality and on to collaborate in the collective unlearning of these ties that persist at time to tell about ourselves. It includes the search of stories that have neither patriarchal, nor adultist nor anthropocentric approaches.
Team
Colombia Plural is provided with contents by a wide network of collaborators who produce written, graphic, sonorous and audio-visual information from the same communities. Many of the collaborators have taken part of the formation processes offered by the Escuela de Comunicación Social Alternativa de Uniclaretiana (School of Alternative Social Communication of Uniclaretiana)
The media also promotes and comes to agreements of cooperation with other independent and local media or with networks of public communicators which allows the republishing of topics or the making of exclusive materials for Colombia Plural.
All the contents are edited and uploaded to the platform by a small editorial board and journalistic management.