Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro vowed to spend one third of his government’s advertising budget on “alternative media” to combat “manipulation” by corporate media.
Petro made the announcement at an event organized for community media outlets that was reportedly attended by 1,500 journalists and news outlets.
In his speech, the president fiercely criticized corporate media’s role in an alleged genocide in Palestine and the silencing of leftist leaders in Colombia and the rest of Latin America.
To silence the president is what the great economic power in Colombia has wanted to do, to silence the president at any cost, to manipulate his ideas, to manipulate his phrases, to cut them up so that they say the opposite of what the president says. This is a task that all the media are doing every day so far, trying to take away the popular support of this government, unsuccessfully. They know very well that if they succeed in taking away the popular support of the Government, there would be a coup d’état immediately.
President Gustavo Petro
In an attempt to combat the concentration of media ownership, Petro announced a major change in the allocation of the government’s spending of advertising budgets.
According to the president, one third of the government’s current advertising budget will be allocated to online media and social media influencers. Another third will be reserved for “alternative media,” according to the presidential website.
The remaining third of the budget will be spent on traditional advertising in corporate media outlets that historically received the bulk of the budget.
“If you empower alternative communication, you empower the people of Colombia” instead of “the powerful” and the capital interests of the corporations that own Colombia’s largest media outlets.
The announcement comes amid growing tensions between the government and corporate media over what Petro called the manipulation of reality.