The Palace of Justice siege on November 6 and 7 1985. The newspaper coverage by El Tiempo was more extensive compared to El Espectador since the former published an extra edition on November 7. Although the footage of the Embassy and the Palace of Justice took place in front of the cameras, the latter quickly resorted to exploiting the spectacular elements and anecdotes from the event, there was also a wealth of images and unconfirmed information, such as individuals who left the building and disappeared, the role of the president at that time, the military, guerrillas, and drug trafficking. The spectacular prevailed in images and stories over analyses, explanations, and contexts in this event.

4.2.3 Television

The Case of Pablo Escobar. Through the development of real stories, the power structure of some television newscasts transitioned from the hands of political families in the ’80s to groups of journalists in the ’90s; this would determine how contents were handled in this period. Contents were predominately immediate, there was a flood of fleeting information, and an effort to gain credibility among audiences, partly explained by the channel’s communicative dominance at that time (in 2000 this changed), when truth was stranger than fiction, coinciding with the beginning of the rating dictatorship; to win audiences over and assure advertising, and as a result the subsistence of the news content.

In this scene, the spectacular was elemental to successfully attracting audiences’ attention, who consumed the information about everyday life, regardless of its importance. In the case of Escobar, especially between 1990 and 1991, the cinematographic, anecdotal, a strong popular cultural presence, the importance of details, incidents that were not contextualised and had few sources, together with self-censorship, were the common denominator in the formula for economic success in these formats that would be upheld in the future.

In this period from 1984, with the assassination of Minister Rodrigo Lara, the media gradually made a transition from astonishment to rationalisation of the informative material. They became aware of the power that the spectacular element implies, even at times when the harshness of the facts demands that the information be rigorously treated.

4.3. 21st century

4.3.1. Written press

Paramilitary Massacres. The journalistic genre of the chronical was used, although it was a real or newsworthy fact, it was aided by literary devices. On occasions this made it seem like it was dealing with a fictional story happening in a different place at a different time, and not an event that had just occurred in the country. Unlike other incidents, the massacres are spectacular, but if we compare them with what happened in the Palace of Justice, the case of Escobar or the release of Ingrid Betancourt, incidents that have similar characteristics, the massacres were not as exploited as media spectacles.

“The credit that can be given to information depends, on the one hand, on the social position of the informant, on the role they play in the exchange situation, on their value of representativeness in relation to the group of which they are spokesmen, and, on the other hand, on the degree of commitment that they manifest in front of the information transmitted. (Charaudeau, 1997: 62)”.