When prosecutors and judges, for reasons that may include fear, resist prosecution, and even those who catch them write short reports trying to get as little involved as possible in the operation, should journalists become the body that uncovers the facts? despite threats from gangs and their leaders who manage to intimidate the entire system of control and justice?

The question has been running through my head for several months now, when the security situation of citizens at the national level has worsened, especially in those places where drug-criminal activity seems to be developing with such intensity.

I remember the early morning when decapitated corpses appeared hanging on the central pedestrian crossing in the canton of Eloy Alfaro (Durán), just like we saw on television. And I also remember the narrative, almost at a football match, with which some colleagues presented a horrible fact en masse through audiovisual media, especially digitally. Stories loaded with qualifying adjectives, which they repeated without any shame; “exposing” information that was later not included in reports, news, judgments or punishments, and which motivates the feeling that those with a camera, mobile phone and microphone are the only ones who dare to point out the perpetrators, something that in other countries has stained the profession of communication with blood. Close as in neighboring Colombia, or as in beloved Mexico.

To inform or not to inform. To interpret or not. To use or not to use a rich journalistic tool of an unofficial source…

To inform or not to inform. To interpret or not. To use or not to use the rich journalistic tool of an unofficial source from which many approximations of some truth that someone tried to hide primordially emerged. To expose or not along with the fact. They are, and should be, now daily dilemmas when compiling the newspaper agenda, inevitably filled with cases of mafia activity. Added to this is the public’s constant suspicion, also primordial, that if they are not told, it favors someone else’s interests.

In the current circumstances, although many people do not like it, and others choose to publicly ridicule, the presumption of innocence, which is the right of the accused, is imposed, paradoxically, even violently. “What cannot be proven does not exist”, the judges point out when they make judgments, the prosecutors when they do not accuse, and this is the same concept with which the journalist’s task is carried out, considering the high percentage of facts that are in transit. through prisons and courts, to include one’s honor and it cannot be affected without the force of evidence.

In the current risky circumstances, I am inclined towards journalism that, without losing its essence, develops its work with caution and precautions that we all had to take in our families and friends. Leaving some aside the cape and the superpowers that set them up as contradictors of the “enemies” they “expose”. Replacing them with exact laws and regulations relating to the facts, thus leaving unmistakable the role that everyone plays in the terrible crisis that has thrown the whole society into agony. (OR)