Colombian journalism’s #MeToo moment: Hundreds of women speak out against a toxic and sexist culture
A reporter we shall call Andrea began working at El Tiempo, Colombia's highest-circulation newspaper, in 2016. She was barely 22, and it was her first job in journalism. From the outset, she noticed that her desk editor made disparaging comments about women, ignored their opinions, and dismissed their work.
One day, another desk editor, a man over 13 years her senior, came over to greet her. First came email messages, commenting on her appearance or asking about her personal life. Then calls to her desk phone, despite being only a few metres away.
“Hello, how are you?” he would say. “Shall we go for an ice-cream? I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.”
“I responded to all those invites, as I initially thought they were harmless,” Andrea recalls. When this happened, she was on a temporary job. To this day, she prefers to remain anonymous for fear of professional repercussions, as this editor holds influence within the newspaper and within political and judicial circles.
These invitations kept coming, and got more insidious over time. If Andrea said no, the editor would ask why and suggest another option. That’s how she ended up accepting an invitation to an expensive restaurant, getting into his car –where he kissed her and touched her body for the first time, without her being able to move– and then going to a hotel.
These invitations laid bare the power asymmetries at play and the fear of a young journalist afraid of jeopardising her career by refusing the advances.
At the end of her contract at the newspaper, Andrea simply left and felt relieved to do so. It took her three years to tell this story to a friend, and ten years to decide to tell it publicly. “It was not until many years later that I understood this was sexual harassment,” she told us recently. “Back then, nobody talked about it. I didn’t know how to file a formal complaint. Today I feel ashamed about this.”
The power imbalance illustrated by Andrea’s story, the normalisation of harassment disguised as gallantry, the silence of colleagues, the lack of protocols and the powerful male-dominated structures… All of these factors enabled Andrea’s harasser to act with impunity at one of the most important newspapers in Latin America. But the kind violence suffered by Andrea, who speaks here for the first time, is not an isolated case.
In March 2026, several female journalists at Noticias Caracol accused two anchors of Colombia's most-watched television news programme of sexual harassment. This case prompted more journalists to speak out about the sexual and workplace harassment they had experienced in various newsrooms across the country.
This movement led several reporters to join forces to gather complaints from female journalists around the country, with more than 200 received at the time of this writing. These complaints are a testimony of the responsibility of many Colombian media organisations, whose leaders haven’t protected women journalists from predators in their newsrooms.
The crack: an intern’s complaint
It all began with a small crack: an intern at Colombia's most-watched news programme reported a journalist from Noticias Caracol of sexual harassment. A few days later, other women then came forward with complaints against another journalist at the same outlet.
The situation was made public on 20 March 2026 through a statement from the network. The organisation tried to protect the names of those accused in its statement, but within less than an hour their names were circulating on social media: Jorge Alfredo Vargas, the prime-time news anchor, and Ricardo Orrego, head of sports.
What no one anticipated was the domino effect that followed those complaints. In a country where impunity in sexual harassment and sexual abuse cases exceeds 90%, the complaints multiplied very quickly.
Complaints soon spread beyond Caracol: there were reports at El Espectador and El Tiempo, both top newspapers, and at the public broadcaster RTVC. And complaints were not only coming from interns. Well-known journalists published accounts of their experiences dating back more than ten years that they had not reported at the time, for fear of the consequences.
Cases previously ignored resurfaced too. In January 2019, Lina Marcela Castillo reported Hollman Morris, then a Bogotá city councillor and now head of RTVC, for sexual and workplace harassment.
Morris denied the allegations and filed a complaint against her for defamation and slander. For years, the justice system worked primarily against Castillo. Only after a letter signed by 171 journalists and activists did the Attorney General’s Office recently designate a prosecutor with a gender-sensitive approach.
Thus was born #YoTeCreoColega [in Spanish, “I believe you, colleague”], a movement driven by journalists and the independent outlet Brava News, which opened a channel to receive testimonies: yotecrecolega@gmail.com.
At the time of this writing, more than 200 cases have been received, with only two reaching judicial proceedings. But the movement continues to grow as more cases of abuse come to light.
“This demonstrates that we are not talking about isolated incidents, but about a systematic practice that has been going on for a long time,” says Juanita Gómez, head of video at Revista Semana and herself a victim of harassment at Noticias Caracol.
The consortium Calladas nunca más [in Spanish, “never silent again], made up of the outlets Cuestión Pública, Volcánicas, A Fondo and the NGO El Veinte, joined the movement too. In addition to collecting testimonies, it seeks to provide legal support to those who choose to pursue that route.
A culture of harassment
Women journalists live under the constant threat of becoming victims of harassment both inside and outside the newsroom. This is neither new nor an isolated matter, and its patterns are easy to identify.
"The majority of cases involve young women of 21 or 22, interns looking for an opportunity,” says Laura Palomino, co-editor-in-chief of Brava News. “It begins as a kind of professional recruitment: ‘I can help you grow’; ‘Come here, let’s have a meeting.’”
What starts as sexual harassment often ends in workplace harassment. When faced with a refusal or a complaint, harassers launch smear operations, isolate the journalists and sideline them in favour of others. The aggressor’s profile is consistent: a person with power, a senior position and a reputation, which allows them to offer benefits and shield themselves from any shadow of doubt.
That is what happened to a woman we’ll call Ángela (a pseudonym, as is Andrea’s) when she was 21. From the moment she started working at El Espectador, an older male journalist would come to her every morning and whisper in her ear: “Hello, can I touch your tit?” One day she grew tired of it and confronted him. The journalists around her burst out laughing.
A month after joining the newspaper, an editor from another desk approached Ángela to congratulate her on her work and proposed that they collaborate on an article: “He spoke to me about some sources that were extremely important, almost inaccessible, and said they were only available at that hour, in that place.”
A meeting was arranged for the evening, at an address that turned out to be a bar with some space underground. The editor, who was drinking, told her she was a “mamacita” [in Spanish, “a hottie” or a “sexy woman”] and that she “looked very beautiful.” Those sources never materialised. Trusting her instincts, Ángela left without giving an explanation or saying goodbye.
The next day, in the newsroom, the editor reprimanded her: “How rude, how unprofessional! You’re an ill-mannered girl.” And so another form of harassment began. In the weeks that followed, the editor started following her out of the building after work without saying a single word.
For Fabiola Calvo, a member of the Colombian Network of Journalists with a Gender Perspective, this pattern is a manifestation of male power sustained by “complicit silence” and she stressed that silence often “leads to impunity.” Calvo referred to the silence of witnesses and managers, and to the silence of the victims themselves, who know that reporting harassers with connections to those in power can create an ordeal they would rather avoid.
After three months working at El Espectador, Ángela did not want to return to the newspaper. She was frustrated, exhausted and despondent. The dream of working there had been shattered. She completed her internship with support from a therapist, while asking herself: “Was I simply not strong enough?”
Twelve years on, Ángela’s voice breaks as she recalls what happened. At the time, speaking out was not possible. “We could not even name it for what it was,” she told us. “It was something hidden, yet allowed and even celebrated.”
Harassment from sources
Women journalists often face harassment from their sources too. “In exchange for information, they are invited to dinner, to someone’s flat, to enclosed spaces. Many go along with it at first, out of inexperience or because they believe they are strong enough to handle it, but the predator is often in control,” Calvo said.
The frequent absence of sexual harassment protocols makes everything worse. “There are no safe reporting channels for those who want to come forward, because the response is always the same: it is better not to cause trouble and not to damage your career in journalism,” warns Paula Bolívar, co-founder of Brava News.
In Colombia, gender protocols arrived in newsrooms as a result of a landmark ruling. In 2021, the Constitutional Court set a precedent with Ruling T-140, the result of a complaint by journalist Claudia Vanessa Restrepo against newspaper El Colombiano.
After alerting the organisation about a sexual assault committed by a colleague, Restrepo was questioned by the human resources team about her clothing, her alcohol consumption and “what lessons she might have learnt from the experience.” The company said that it couldn’t do anything, since the events had taken place outside working hours.
In the absence of any protection, Restrepo resigned and took the case to the courts: she filed a complaint against her aggressor and demanded that El Colombiano create a protocol to address such cases. The Constitutional Court ruled in her favour.
The ruling, which references the Convention 190 of the International Labour Organization, made clear that employers cannot remain neutral in the face of gender-based violence. Justice Cristina Pardo, who authored the ruling, explains what that means in practice: “The woman’s account must be validated. This does not imply a judicial judgement; the organisation simply has a duty to protect her and to take measures to ensure she does not remain in contact with the aggressor.”
The ruling established that the work context “is not an office or a set of working hours, but a network of interpersonal relationships, which includes outings and informal gatherings.” Protecting the victim and respecting the presumption of innocence are parallel and independent obligations.
The ruling ordered El Colombiano to create a protocol for the prevention of and in response to gender-based violence. As a constitutional precedent, that obligation became a benchmark for other media organisations across the country.
The protocols are not applied
Latin America is making gradual progress in the development of gender protocols. The study #MediosSinViolencias, produced by Unesco and the Argentinian organisation Comunicación para la Igualdad, reveals that 43% of the media outlets studied across 14 countries in the region already have protocols in place.
Sandra Chaher, director of Comunicación para la Igualdad, is optimistic about those findings: “I prefer to see the glass as half-full. Nine years had passed since the first protocols began to emerge in the wake of movements such as #NiUnaMenos and #MeToo, and nearly 50% of media outlets in the region had some kind of protocol."
The protocols are sound. The problem is what organisations are actually doing with them. “We found Argentinian journalists who said: ‘The protocol exists, but nobody has seen it and it is not available to staff,’” said Chaher, in a finding confirmed by all the women we interviewed.
The study’s figures confirm a gap between norms and reality: 75% of the women interviewed for the report said they were aware of at least one case of gender-based violence against a journalist, yet only 28% felt able to raise a complaint about it. This fear is not unfounded: in almost half of the instances where complaints were made, there were reprisals, such as dismissal, threats or pressure to resign. In 54% of the cases, aggressors were not sanctioned.
According to Comunicación para la Igualdad, only 18% of those working in the news industry said their organisations had specialists working on these issues. For Chaher, this is the crux of the problem: “If the organisation has no department for dealing with violence, if it does not sanction aggressors, if aggressors occupy positions of authority, you can’t dismantle that omertà of impunity and violence, and this will not be resolved. It is not just a matter of having a protocol.”
A case study
Following the complaints at Noticias Caracol, Fidel Cano, editor-in-chief of El Espectador, said that the allegations had “shaken” him and that, whilst the outlet he leads is not immune to similar cases, its internal protocols were fairly rigorous.
Those statements prompted a workplace harassment complaint from Pilar Cuartas, former editor for Gender and Diversity at El Espectador, who recounted her experience as a victim of violence at the hands of an editor from another desk, who systematically undermined and invalidated her work.
In June 2024, Cuartas filed a complaint for workplace harassment and wrote to the email address designated in the outlet’s protocol, but the message bounced back because the address did not even exist.
The result was that the case ended up in the hands of a workplace relations committee with no experience in dealing with these situations, and no knowledge of how to conduct the process or take testimonies. As a result, the committee breached the confidentiality of the case.
“I stopped sleeping at night, and this affected my physical and mental health,” Pilar told us recently. “I felt watched. I thought people were talking about me, and indeed they were.”
Protocols must comply with a series of standards, said gender violence specialist lawyer Yamile Roncancio: “We have immediate care or containment measures; psycho-social support measures, which should be trauma-informed; legal assistance measures with a duty of non-neutrality and non-repetition. The protocol must incorporate those kinds of measures in order to function.”
In the case of Cuartas’ complaint, the committee took a month to activate a care pathway, with no psychological or legal support, and without separating her from the person she had complained about. Only when she contacted editor-in-chief Fidel Cano, who said he knew nothing of the case and declared himself neutral, did the process move forward.
Nevertheless, El Espectador determined that no workplace harassment had occurred, without explaining why.
Cuartas brought the case before a judge on the grounds that El Espectador had violated her right to live free from violence. The judge rejected her claim, though he acknowledged that the newspaper had no clear reporting routes. On 24 September 2024, three months after filing her complaint, Cuartas left her job at the newspaper.
Protocols fail both as tools for punishment and prevention. “There must be protocols to make aggressors aware that certain conduct is reprehensible under the law and within the organisation, and that it will not be treated as normal behaviour, because it forms part of a patriarchal culture,” said Justice Cristina Pardo.
Pardo, Chaher and Roncancio all agree that campaigns and workshops are necessary to change the culture within newsrooms. “They are held on commemorative occasions such as 8 March or 25 November [the international day for the elimination of violence against women], but are forgotten for the rest of the year,” said Chaher.
For Cuartas, this is crucial, because she had assumed that the protocol was sound and that the newspaper would protect those who came forward but none of that happened. El Espectador defended itself in court with a response that, according to her, was riddled with prejudice.
“It conveys the idea that I am capricious and seeking revenge against my harasser,” she told us. “It also implies that I am betraying the institution and that I am not credible.”
The harassment she suffered, and her re-victimisation throughout the process, left serious marks on Cuartas’ life and shattered her dream of devote herself to journalism.
An assault on freedom of expression
Amid tensions and reputational threats, several of the outlets mentioned, including El Tiempo, El Espectador and Caracol, have opened communication channels for victims to file complaints, even if they are no longer employed at the newsroom, so that appropriate internal investigations can be opened and individual cases examined.
However, the victims of harassment are concerned that these actions are merely a response to the current situation, and that their harassers will remain in their posts without any sanctions, putting dozens of women journalists at risk.
Juanita Gómez, who suffered harassment at Caracol TV, calls for an honest mea culpa “that leads to a profound reflection on how we reached this point without anything more having happened.”
This is all the more serious when one considers the ultimate consequence of harassment. The toxic environment in which many women in journalism operate pushes them towards self-censorship and drives them out of newsrooms, which constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. That is why protocols are not mere procedural requirements, but something that benefits society as a whole.
As Justice Pardo puts it, “the voice of women, who make up 50 % of humanity, cannot be silenced in this way.”
At the time of this writing, two of the people accused of harassing the sources featured in this story continue to work at the outlets mentioned and hold positions of power and prominence. The journalist who harassed Pilar Cuartas resigned. At least five more people were prepared to report him for workplace harassment as well.
Both El Espectador and El Tiempo stated that they were willing to receive and process cases under their protocols. In the case of El Tiempo, its editor-in-chief, Andrés Mompotes, told us about his interest “in reviewing everything that needs to be reviewed regarding events that took place ten years ago or at some other point prior to the implementation of the policy and protocols that are today rigorous and have been strengthened since 2020.”
However, they have received no new complaints yet. As in the case of Caracol Noticias, Mompotes said, they have “commissioned an external audit to review what is mentioned in that context from previous years.”
“I am aware of the need to carry out a rigorous assessment of everything that may have happened and to put each case in perspective,” Mompotes said. “Harassment is not and will not be tolerated here.”