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The general editor of this journalistic house, Jorge Cardona Alzate, was awarded the Life and Work award. We were also awarded in Caricature (Mico), in Criticism (Carlos Granés) and in video report (Óscar Güesguán, Juan Hernández, María Monsalve, William Ariza and Johann González). The winning work in the category Stimuli to young journalism was also published by El Espectador and was carried out by Shara García, Bryan Pérez and Alejandro Ballestas, from Unisabana Medios.
The viewer was recognized with five Simón Bolívar Awards. During the gala of the 45th edition, which took place at the end of yesterday afternoon, this journalistic house won the awards in the categories Stimulating young journalism with the video The fight for education in Yacopíby Shara García, Bryan Pérez and Alejandro Ballestas, from Unisabana Medios; and Report with the video Glyphosate: the first death case admitted by the IACHR, conducted by Óscar Güesguán, Juan Hernández, María Monsalve, William Ariza and Johann González.
Likewise, in Criticism the text by Carlos Granés entitled From Pedro Nel Gómez to Doris Salcedo and for the cartoon “Desde chiquito”, by Carlos Mario Gallego, better known as Mico.
The most important award of the year, life and work of a journalist, was won by Jorge Cardona Alzate, General Editor The viewer for fifteen years, and who in the 28 years that he has dedicated to this newspaper has written on political, sporting and judicial issues, the same ones that he has taught in various university chairs.
“His passion is judicial journalism, which he learned alongside Luis de Castro, judicial editor of The viewer for forty years. That stubbornness to tie up loose ends, to contrast the sources until they are exhausted and to stubbornly contextualize the facts has been his style mark, as well as the best shielding of the news line of the medium that follows those quality standards reiterated to the point of his song ” recalls the jury.
Jorge Cardona’s taste for reading and writing was forged since his father gave them a reward, he and his brothers, to do the summary of a reading; he chose to focus on sports magazines.
However, the custom of always having a notebook and pencil in your pocket, and a scissors to cut out the memorable press reports from each newspaper that came to the family home, has been for as long as he can remember, as he said in his speech upon receiving the award.
The importance of the news was permeated in his mind when, on the birthday of his older brother, his grandmother, who always walked with a blue radio, announced that the president of the United States had been killed.
“Henceforth, life flowed through its first fruits. He wrote in the notebook with an account of famous phrases, data presidents or verses of Garcia Lorca “he said.
When it came to deciding what to do for the rest of his life, Cardona Alzate chose the economy. Later, friends took him by the currents of philosophy and under President Betancur doors opened journalism in the newspaper The earth, from Tunja, at the same time that he taught art history and theater classes in organizations and schools.
“Writing was the only answer,” he pointed out, when he recalled how he saw from afar the Palace of Justice in flames or the demonstration that reproached the murder of Guillermo Cano, director of The viewer.
Cardona Alzate wrote “about what was happening or what could be fictionalized in a nation that was beginning to bleed to death” until Víctor Julio Niño gave her the opportunity to report on the radio program Bogota Alert.
He then made a strong connection with the judicial chronicle, with which he narrated murders, rapes, thefts and all kinds of misfortunes that allowed him to “temper his conscience and understand” that it is not possible to understand what is happening or what people live from the desk.
Years later, Jairo Humberto Rico changed Jorge Cardona’s life by promoting him to the courts, tribunals and courts, a “labyrinth in which I was trapped forever.”
Since then he knows how to move perfectly between judicial scandals, the defendants, the scapegoats. The notebook and the pencil acquired another meaning there, because they were no longer the elements that served him to write down important things or write about the national reality, but they were elementary to put together the typical puzzles of this type of research in which the “agenda own and the blind eye to the competition ”are also fundamental.
During his speech upon receiving the Life and Work of a Journalist award, Jorge Cardona also dedicated a few words to the university chair, to the memories of the newsroom, to his colleagues and to the sources that “allowed him to survive among the colossi of the reporting industry.”
Just as in journalism he learned to report without giving privilege to the versions of power, he understood that “the challenge was to get home and, paper and pen in hand, immerse myself in reading the midwives of ideas.”
On those nights the books were born Days of memory, Diary of the conflict: from Las Delicias to Havana and Pioneras de la libertad, a text edited this year, dedicated to the history of transgressors and forgotten women in 200 years of independence.
The 2020 Simón Bolívar Prize jury honors Jorge Cardona Alzate for the journalistic legacy he leaves behind in several generations, as well as in written books, but also for “adapting to the abrupt changes in the media ecosystem and for leading the transition of analog writing to the digital in not easy times for the journalistic companies ”.
Therefore, the general editor of The viewer proclaims that freedom of expression is a right that is renewed in the technological revolution of newsrooms and university classrooms, since students, as well as him or as Mercedes Sosa sang, must be the ones who keep alive the hope of inhabiting a “ country in peace where freedom is life ”.
Jorge Cardona Alzate’s full speech:
Other awards for El Espectador
The Simón Bolívars also recognized the video report Glyphosate: the first death case admitted by the IACHR, by Óscar Güesguán, Juan Hernández, María Monsalve, William Ariza and Johann González, a chronological account of the fumigation, from the early 1980s until it was taken up by the Government of Iván Duque, which is supported by the testimonies of the family from Yaneth Valderrama, experts and lawyers.
For the jury, the graphic resources “allow the visualization of data and archive images that energize the narrative, the story focuses on the first victim of glyphosate spraying in Colombia recognized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.”
On the other hand, the jury also awarded, in the category Stimuli to young journalism, the video The fight for education in Yacopí, made by Shara García, Bryan Pérez and Alejandro Ballestas, from Unisabana Medios-El Espectador, because it tells the routine of a school teacher in Yacopí, who travels every day by motorcycle, on horseback and on foot, for several hours, to teach them some children in a rural school.
“With a careful image and a good narrative text, the journalists show how many educators in Colombia work with dignity and dedication despite their difficulties,” reveals the jury.
In Criticism The viewer also won for the text From Pedro Nel Gómez to Doris Salcedo, by Carlos Granés, who for the jury manages to “establish a surprising, original and controversial relationship between the work of Pedro Nel Gómez and Doris Salcedo, with a solid argument and taking advantage of the situation that allowed the Bogota public to observe and compare the two works. With an additional merit: where what is explicitly said ends, what is suggested by the text begins, capable of unleashing a very interesting discussion and reflection in the artistic field of the country.
Finally, Carlos Mario Gallego, better known as Mico, won in Caricature for Since I was little, which refers to a fact that has been explored countless times.
In Colombia, reports of illegal interceptions and their possible perpetrators tend to become a landscape.
For the jury, “Gallego then returns to the same idea but places it in an imagined past time. And in that scene – familiar and absurd – the satirical proposal is made concrete. It also highlights the recognized economy and forcefulness of the author’s line ”.
For its part, the team of informers Caracol Television won the Simon Bolivar in the category Chronicle by video The Red, in which Angela Zambrano and Ana Torres narrate how a FARC ex-combatant met his childhood friend and together they created a productive craft beer project in a territorial space in the department of Tolima.
“Treat this story with the flavor of conversation, in which the force of testimony predominates. Without major formal pretensions and with ambient sound, the chronicle discreetly slides us through those mountains where reconciliation and is no longer part of the discourse but of everyday life, ”says the jury.
Journalist of the year
For the Simón Bolívar Awards, Ricardo Calderon he is the journalist of the year because “if investigative journalism consists of making known facts that some powerful person wants to keep hidden”, he is the perfect executor, they say, of that task that enriches democracy.
Ricardo Calderón has dedicated himself to investigative journalism. He led the research team of the Semana magazine, where he worked for 26 years in the newsroom, until, last October, he became the director after Alejandro Santos left office after almost twenty years in the job. However, it did not last long in this medium, which has undergone reorganizations in recent years after being bought by the Gilinski Group.
In this magazine he published the reports Operation Silence Y Black sheep on alleged corruption, interceptions and extrajudicial executions committed by soldiers.
For this reason, in 2020, the jury of the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award recognizes “his outstanding work of reporting this year on the abuses of power in the Military Forces, and for staying in line with the most vigorous journalism possible, when the songs of clicks siren direct the attention of the owners by the easy way and, precisely, when it corresponds to him to assume the reins of a medium that tries to recover the informative leadership that it had for years ”.
Alternative media
This year the awards gave a great boost to alternative media. In the investigative section, Cerosetenta and La Liga contra el Silencio won for the video The second by second of the shot that killed Dilan Cruz, a work in which the background and the form converge to illustrate a basic but elusive rule of this genre: the diversity of sources.
The investigation also recognized the work of Jeremy McDermott, entitled The invisible drug trafficker: In the footsteps of Memo Fantasma, published in Insight Crime, and the chronicle Leonela wants to be your friend, by David Trujillo, from Radio Ambulante.
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