La Contratopedia Caribe obtained on October 17, 2024 the certification according to the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) standard of Reporters Without Borders, implemented in Colombia since 2024, from which more than one hundred media have been accompanied to comply with the standard with reference CWA 17493 of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN).
The process towards compliance with the requirements established by the standard has three phases: self-evaluation, which allows the media to reflect on their editorial processes and their transparency, publication of the transparency report and certification.
“This internal evaluation process, which was carried out together with the journalistic team, allowed us to detail the origin of our funding and the characteristics of the funds we are willing to receive and those we do not consider legit because they represent a risk to the independence of our journalistic agenda,” said Tatiana Velásquez Archibold, co-founder and general editor of La Contratopedia Caribe, a media specialized in monitoring regional public resources since 2019.
In addition to the transparency criteria, the accuracy and precision of the information are essential for compliance with the JTI standard.
“We found that we had documented our administrative and accounting routines much more than we imagined, contrary to the journalistic ones. That is to say, we noticed that we had clear journalistic praxis and the values that support our practice, but that we did not have enough documentation. So, we set ourselves the task of creating a master document with our editorial guidelines,” added Velásquez Archibold. “This allowed us to improve the methodology for verifying information; the off-the-record sources policy; the guidelines for sensitive images; [the] action plan for possible conflicts of interest in journalistic coverage; and details for the audience on how to access the media’s journalistic team in the event of a request for rectification, clarification or response to published content.”
Once the self-assessment phase was completed, the external audit was carried out by CMD Certification, an authorized certification body in Colombia, which granted the JTI certification to media such as Casa Macondo, Vorágine and El Cronista.
