It is inevitable, in university classrooms, to deal with the relationship with sources in the interaction of mediators that we carry out in the practical field of journalism, in connection with the case of conversations discovered between a drug trafficker named Norero and journalist Andersson Boscán, from La Posto, which has flown into the field of journalistic mediation in what the theory calls “emerging media”: a new proposal, a new narrative – which also gave them problems due to its very personal format -, and not only with undeniable editorial success, but also surprisingly – not to say suspiciously – abundant business model.

This is how I perceive La Posta: an unconventional media outlet that prides itself on its credibility even to bring down officials, today highlighted by the shameful proximity of its co-founder to the source of drugs.

This entanglement in which La Posta appears today has political purposes – it must be said – due to the “selectivity of the prosecutor”; because of the imbalance with which he was exposed to public ridicule – it is scandalous that a journalist is “messing” with a drug trafficker, and not that the person in charge of State Security Diego Ordóñez had direct contact with drug traffickers – ; for the arrows of revenge he receives from actors like the “delivery girl” or the “tenth messenger”, whose heads are adorned by the ego cult of the emerging media.

Conclusion: how should we treat sources, these people, officials, witnesses of events, bearers of information that interest the media for its mediation with the audience? There are those who speak of “spring cultivation” as those plants that will occasionally bear fruit. There are those who recommend proximity to the source, because of the interaction of trust that must be established in favor of the truth of the information revealed. There are those who, because of the level of trust, identify them as “informants” and then as “sources”.

And they have their own levels: reliable, interested, direct, indirect, hidden, protected… They are personal, documentary, institutional… In the end, a level of relationship is always established between the source and the journalist, which will determine the quality of the information that will be process. But as the late teacher of journalistic ethics Javier Darío Restrepo says: “We must never forget that the journalist-source relationship has only one reason for existence: to get to the truth that is owed to the reader.” Restrepo is my reference in managing ethics: “Every piece of information requires the journalist to exercise his commitment to the truth, his independence and his responsibility towards society.”

And I personally consider “independence” one of the most important pillars of this relationship. The independence that gives us the possibility to publish without conditions – or obligations: telling a drug dealer “I’m not here to talk about drug trafficking” is like telling a pedophile priest “I’m not here to talk about child abuse, but about stealing from the piggy bank. church”- Commitment is to the truth, and this simultaneously brings us closer and further away from the source. (OR)