A new report on Colombian journalism describes more than 260 testimonies of harassment, power, and silence, exposing how women in media learned to survive newsrooms that promised careers while quietly teaching fear, obedience, and resignation across generations for years.

The Newsroom Whisper Network

In many Colombian newsrooms, the warning reportedly came before the complaint. “That’s just how he is.” “Better avoid him.” The phrases sound small, almost casual, the kind of office folklore passed from one woman to another near an editing desk, in a hallway, after a broadcast. But in the report released by the movement Yo te creo colega, those phrases become evidence of something larger and more brutal: a professional culture where women were expected to adapt to abuse rather than expect protection.

The report, prepared by journalists Juanita Gómez, Paula Bolívar, Laura Palomino, Catalina Botero, and Mónica Rodríguez, gathers more than 260 testimonies from journalists, interns, and media workers. The accounts span more than two decades. They do not describe a handful of awkward encounters or personal misunderstandings. They describe a repeated culture of sexual harassment, workplace harassment, silence, and impunity inside Colombian journalism.

The pattern is familiar because women across Latin America know this script too well. A man with influence praises a young woman’s talent. He offers access, guidance, visibility, and a possible job. Then the professional compliment shifts into pressure. The promise of growth becomes a test of obedience. One anonymous journalist said a man told her he could help her get a job at the channel, that he saw potential in her, but that she had to “behave well.”

That line carries the old grammar of power. It is not only about desire. It is about hierarchy. In a region where media careers are often built through personal networks, scarce contracts, public visibility, and fragile reputations, the ability to hire, recommend, promote, or freeze someone out becomes a weapon. For women, especially young women entering the industry, the newsroom can become a place where ambition has to pass through a corridor of risk.

Power Wearing a Press Badge

According to the report, 80 percent of the cases came from television media, with the remaining 20 percent distributed among print outlets, radio, and digital platforms. That concentration matters. Television gives prestige. It gives face authority. It turns presenters, directors, and senior reporters into public figures, sometimes untouchable figures. When that public power enters the workplace, the imbalance deepens.

The report presents thirteen documented cases, some with identified testimonies, and says the process continues to receive accounts from journalists in different regions of Colombia. Among them, Juanita Gómez describes an incident in 2015 during coverage in Chile, when a colleague tried to kiss her without consent in an elevator. For years, she said, the experience was normalized as part of the job. “I had to push him off me, by force.”

Sports journalist Lina Tobón said she suffered a forced kiss when she was 17 and beginning at a local channel. Years later, already at a national outlet, she said she was subjected to nonconsensual touching by a higher-ranking colleague, a man she said had already been denounced by several women without consequences. After rejecting him, she said workplace harassment followed, ending in her resignation.

That is where the damage becomes more than a single moment. The report stresses that the impact is professional and emotional: anxiety, stress, and even abandonment of journalism. “There is not only abuse, but there is also loss of talent,” the text says. In a country where journalism has already paid a high price through violence, pressure, and political intimidation, losing women because newsrooms cannot protect them is not an internal human resources problem. It is a democratic wound.

For Latin American women, the Colombian case carries regional weight because journalism is one of the professions that helps define public truth. Reporters ask presidents questions. They investigate corruption. They tell victims’ stories. But if the women inside those institutions are told to stay silent about their own harm, then the press itself begins to mirror the same impunity it often claims to expose.

The alleged aggressors described in the report were not marginal figures. They included directors, presenters, and bosses who could influence victims’ careers. One anonymous testimony said, “I felt my career depended on what I accepted or did not accept.” That sentence is the machinery of coercion in its cleanest form. It shows why silence cannot be confused with consent. The report’s conclusion says it plainly: silence is a survival strategy.

A Latin American Mirror

Since March, Colombia has faced a wave of public allegations of sexual harassment in media organizations, putting working conditions across the sector under scrutiny and pushing institutions to respond. The Ministry of Labor began inspections of several companies, including the public system RTVC, after accusations against its manager, Hollman Morris, seeking to verify possible labor rights violations and workplace violence.

The most viral case involved Caracol Televisión, which announced the departure “by mutual agreement” of presenter Jorge Alfredo Vargas and the dismissal of sports journalist Ricardo Orrego after public accusations against both. These moves may look like accountability, and for many women watching, they may feel like something long delayed. But the report warns that despite legal advances, structural failures remain in prevention and punishment.

That is the central question in Latin America. What happens after the scandal? Too often, the region’s institutions react when public shame becomes impossible to manage. They inspect after women speak. They punish after the names trend. They promise protocols after careers have already been damaged. The deeper challenge is creating systems strong enough that women do not have to sacrifice anonymity, peace, or employment just to be believed.

Colombia’s moment also speaks to class, age, and professional vulnerability. Interns and young journalists are among the easiest to pressure because they are still building a name, still learning the unspoken rules, still afraid of being labeled difficult. In media, reputation is currency. A whisper can close a door. A powerful man’s version can travel faster than a woman’s complaint.

For Latin American women, this report is not only about Colombian television sets or newsroom corridors. It is about the old bargain women have been asked to accept in offices, universities, campaigns, courts, cultural institutions, and political parties: endure the powerful man, manage him quietly, protect the institution, and do not ruin your future. The words change by country. The ritual remains.

The report by Yo te creo colega breaks that ritual by turning whispers into a record. It does not present harassment as a crisis, but as something accumulated, protected, and repeated over the years. That distinction matters. A crisis can be blamed on individuals. An accumulated crisis demands institutional memory, repair, and reform.

Colombia’s newsrooms now face a test that goes beyond dismissals or inspections. They must decide whether the women who tell the country’s stories can finally tell their own without being punished for surviving. For Latin America, the lesson is sharper still. Democracies cannot ask women to defend truth in public while leaving them alone in private with power, fear, and closed doors.