Transitional justice and the media: a case study on the special jurisdiction for peace and the press in Colombia

Abstract

Transitional justice applicable to the transition from dictatorships to democracies and from states of war to states of peace, supposes a very wide field of study, application and varied developments according to the transition scenarios. Its implementation under conditions of permanence of internal armed conflict and social and political cleavage, has led to divisions for or against it and for or against the armed actors in dispute in Colombia. These cleavages have been transferred to the media in the form of ideological positions, which construct truths that may or may not favor transitional justice. This article deals with transitional justice as a theoretical and political perspective, synthesizes the origin, development and characteristics of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, JEP in Colombia and presents the results of an investigation that seeks to identify the existence or not of a differential treatment by of the newspapers El Tiempo and El Espectador on the Transitional Justice Law in the case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (2017), JEP applied to the FARC-EP guerrilla group in the framework of the Havana peace process signed in the year 2016.