The actress and presenter Margarita Rosa de Francisco announced through a statement on Tuesday that she is leaving her position as a columnist in the newspaper El Tiempo motivated by her last column in which she questioned the owner of the medium, Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo and for which he received a warning from the magnate’s daughter, Luz Ángela Sarmiento, telling him, among other things, that he could continue in the middle if he respected Sarmiento’s honor and name.

In herstatement from Francisco, she said that her resignation is the result of a reflection of his own coherence “in the face of not being able to continue writing freely on topics like that, just as I did when playing many others that disturbed me with the same intensity.” She also clarified that her positions or opinions are not absolute or of “moral norms”, which she despises, but that it is a struggle of values ​​within herself. She added that her time at the newspaper led her to inform herself more rigorously about the reality of Colombia because of the reasons she gave in her column, where she pointed out that the one who elects the country’s president is not Álvaro Uribe but the businessman.

The well-known actress said that the questions she asked in her column were based on “very judicious investigations by respectable journalists” and that, despite that, she does not feel morally superior for having written it. She also referred to the response she had from Sarmiento Angulo’s daughter and described it as a “praiseworthy” reply.

Finally, she said that she thanks the Sarmiento family and Roberto Pombo, whom she praised and said that she gave him very timely advice, for “such an unforgettable experience.”

The spine

“How can we not think of people more unnameable than” the unnameable “, owners of the entire country, who finance the campaigns of presidents like the one who misgoverns us today?”, This was one of the controversial questions that the renowned Cali actress wrote in his column for the Bogota newspaper, where she attacked the banker, businessman and owner of the medium, Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo.

Margarita Rosa launched several taunts at the owner of the AVAL group: criticized the national government and assured that in Colombia “It is not ‘the one who Uribe says’, but the one who says the most unnameable and untouchable of all”, which, according to the actress and without naming him at any time in her column, it is about Luis Carlos Sarmiento.

Through a thread on Twitter, FLIP referred to the guidelines that a media must have when an individual publishes an opinion column and he assured that when an information portal, in this case the newspaper El Tiempo, lacks editorial limits in the columns, “spaces of censorship and self-censorship are opened. If a column crosses those borders not drawn, it can become a letter of resignation or a reason for dismissal ”, argued the entity.

Faced with the response of Luz Ángela Sarmiento, which for many was read as a threat, FLIP assured that “when spheres other than the editorial issue complaints, questions are generated around the impact that owners have on the content of opinion spaces ”.

In this sense, FLIP assures that the media must have “transparency” and, with that, it will be able to demand “clear rules for columnists who publish in a medium and it is a measure that protects freedom of expression”. In addition, they mentioned that if these game guidelines are not in place, “opacity” is generated, which would cause “The dismissal of the columnist configures censorship by the medium.”

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