Blackwell Reference Online

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With an area of 1.14 million square kilometers, Colombia is the fourth largest country in Latin America. The population is 45 million. Geographical conditions impede the infrastructural development as well as the opening up of an efficient system of communication. For several decades, a violent conflict has been going on in Colombia. As a consequence of the peaceful disarming of more than 30,000 paramilitaries before April 2006, the situation became relatively quiet. To replace the previous 1886 constitution, the foundation of all media law for over a century, a new constitution was ratified in 1991. The basis of Colombian press law is now Art. 20, which grants every human being the right to “express and spread freely his opinion, inform himself, and get true and unbiased information, as well as to found mass media.” All means of mass communication are free according to Art. 20, under a social responsibility concept of the media (→  Freedom of the Press, Concept of ). There is no →  censorship (→  Communication Law and Policy: South America ). Colombia can look back to more than 200 years of press history. The first →  newspaper was published in 1791. In the nineteenth century alone there were more than 1,000 newspapers that accompanied Colombia's difficult path to the formation of a republic. Today about 35 daily papers are published in Colombia. Colombia's most important daily ... log in or subscribe to read full text