Colombia
In a polarised election year, Colombia’s media landscape continues to undergo structural shifts away from traditional media. This change coincides with declining trust in news, increasing news avoidance, and the ongoing impact of emerging technologies and networks on politics and the industry.
As the weekly reach of television and print for news continues to decline, the media environment in Colombia is increasingly shaped by a dependence on online platforms that is transforming how news is produced, distributed, and consumed beyond traditional channels. This shift is reflected in a range of industry developments, including the launch of OTT platforms, which integrate live TV, on-demand services, and digital content. It is also visible in the expansion of audio, streaming, podcasts, and video within traditional brands such as Caracol Radio, Caracol TV, RCN, and El Tiempo.
Social and video networks are central to how information circulates and to how the news agenda is shaped. During the 2026 electoral process, much of the online conversation took place on platforms such as TikTok, X, and Instagram, where attention often focused on viral content and campaign-driven messaging. Short-form video is particularly prominent, with both media organisations and political actors investing more heavily in this format.
In this context, 35% of respondents report getting news from news-focused creators or influencers weekly, with the highest use (40%) among the youngest age group (18–24s). These creators range from legacy journalists to independent commentators, some of them politically aligned,and are becoming increasingly important intermediaries in political communication. For example, President Gustavo Petro granted an interview at the presidential residence to a controversial streamer to discuss education, security, and the role of young people in politics. Colombia reflects a broader trend in Latin America, where consumption of news produced by creators is above average, posing a challenge for traditional news media in the region.
Artificial intelligence is also playing a more visible role in Colombian newsrooms, as organisations experiment with automation in content production, curation, and distribution. Regional outlet Diario Occidente developed 30 automated feeds to generate and distribute news on social media, producing roughly 800 news pieces in six months and significantly reducing costs. In July 2025, business newspaper La República published its first edition using AI to transform online articles for print. Meanwhile, digital-native outlet La Silla Vacía continues to experiment through its AI Lab, including launching a chatbot (SillaIA) designed to help users navigate political information.
Alongside these newsroom experiments, AI-powered tools are also beginning to shape how audiences access news. In Colombia, around one in ten (9%) now say they use an AI chatbot for news weekly. This reflects a broader regional trend identified by Comscore, which highlights the growing role of AI assistants and search tools that provide direct responses as gateways to news, raising questions about potential impact on referral traffic to news websites.1
At a time of digital disruption and erosion of traditional advertising models, radio is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in decades, with two historic radio news organisations restructuring their operations. RCN (owned by the Ardila Lülle Group) consolidated its radio news operations under its flagship brand La FM, integrating its digital platforms, while Caracol Radio (part of the Spanish conglomerate PRISA) integrated W Radio and its digital operations under the Caracol Radio brand. These changes have been accompanied by layoffs as part of the consolidation of programming. Meanwhile, in April 2026, public broadcaster RTVC re-adopted the historical name INRAVISIÓN, a move framed by the government as reaffirming its public service mandate, civic participation, and the role of state media. This follows a period of scrutiny, with some concerns about political influence and editorial independence.
Alongside these transformations, renewed public attention to allegations of sexual harassment has rattled the industry, sparking wider debates about workplace culture, power dynamics, and accountability. These discussions have unfolded alongside a deeply polarised election year, during which the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) has documented attacks against journalists that restrict or obstruct their coverage.2
News avoidance is also on the rise, with nearly five in ten Colombians (49%) saying they sometimes or often avoid the news, up 5pp from last year, which previous findings suggest is largely driven by negative effects on mood and feeling worn out by news. Likewise, six in ten (60%) are concerned about what is real and what is false on the internet, suggesting that rising news consumption across social media, video networks, and messaging apps does not necessarily translate into perceptions of greater information accuracy online.
Víctor García Perdomo
Dean of the Communication School and Director of the Research Center for Digital Technology & Society, Universidad de La Sabana
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Methodology note
We conducted a repoll for the social, messaging, and video network numbers in March 2026 due to a scripting error in the original poll. In the Colombia repoll, we also collected new data on brand reach and brand trust to reflect a merger announced when the initial survey was in the field. All other numbers are from the January/February poll.
Changing media
The gradual increase in the use of AI chatbots for news (+3pp), alongside the stability of social media for news, coincides with a continued decline in TV (-5pp) and print (-4pp), while online news use remains stable.
Pay for online news
15%
(+1)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
49%
(+5)
Trust in news overall
25%
(-7)
Global average: 37%
Trust in news in Colombia has declined sharply to 25% (down 7pp), in the context of a challenging political climate and a continued reliance on social media and video networks for news. However, trust in individual news brands remains significantly higher, with regional TV news channels, Noticias Uno, and Señal Colombia all with around 60% trust.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
102/180
Score 51.66
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 https://www.comscore.com/lat/Prensa-y-Eventos/Presentaciones-y-libros-blancos/2026/Tendencias-Digitales-Definiendo-el-rumbo-del-2025-2026-Edicion-LATAM
2 https://flip.org.co/pronunciamientos/la-flip-exige-respuestas-y-acciones-frente-a-las-denuncias-de-violencias-basadas-en-genero-en-los-medios