Ignacio Gomez

Ignacio Gómez, "Colombia, is the director of investigations at "Noticias Uno," a current affairs program at Bogota television station Canal Uno. He is the former director of investigations at El Espectador, the country's oldest daily newspaper. His reports have probed deeply into drug-trafficking, political corruption, arms trade, and mercenary involvement in the Colombian civil war and have appeared in several international publications, including Germany's Der Spiegel and Britain's The Guardian. Gómez has won numerous journalism prizes, including the Rothko Chapel Award in 1991 for his "exceptional commitment to truth and freedom." In March, 2000, Goméz was presented the Sam Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Latin American Journalism. He has also won three times Colombia's Simón Bolívar National Prize for Journalism, including once for revealing how British mercenaries had trained Colombian right-wing paramilitaries involved in the narcotics trade. He later published a book, Los Comandos de la Guerra, on the topic. Gómez has written four other books, including La última misión de Werner Mauss, which examined a German spy's career in Colombia as a hostage negotiator. Gómez also teaches press freedom at Javeriana University and is the director of the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (Press Freedom Foundation) in Bogotá. Gómez was a 2000-2001 Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2002, he was a recipient of the International Press Freedom Awards from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Gomez is also a recipient of Amnesty International's Human Rights Media Award for Journalist under Risk."


 * Member, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists