Satirical and Hard News Coverage of the Mayor of Bogotá

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Andrea Cancino-Borbón, whose focus is on satirical ‘fake news’ in Colombia.

At present, Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogotá is highly unpopular with citizens, and an independent media outlet has been set up to publish satire and parody news about him – but articles from this site have been picked up at times by mainstream news outlets and misunderstood as real reporting. This moves such obviously ‘fake’ stories from a harmless and humorous context to a much more problematic place.

So, how is the personal and political profile of the mayor framed by this satire outlet, and how different is this from conventional news reporting? The project compared satirical and mainstream news stories about the mayor, and found him portrayed overall as incapable, naive, narcissistic, elitist, and distant from the people. His political initiatives were seen as inefficient, constantly focussing on management costs, and obsessed with themes like public transport, apps, a potential recall election, and the conflict of construction and the environment.

Such attributes were present in both hard news and parody stories. The satirical stories exaggerated his attributes, but could still serve to confuse audiences and help to establish negative news frames about him – but they also hold him accountable for his actions.