In 2017 Daniel Samper Ospina won the prestigious Simón Bolivar National Journalism Award, which celebrates truth and integrity in the Colombian press. But the piece that he was recognized for was not a newspaper article or TV reportage. It was a satirical YouTube video where he exposed the corruption and dishonesty of the Colombian right wing in a funny yet striking and truthful manner. However, some months before the Simón Bolivar Awards, probably as a response to the video, former president of Colombia and prominent conservative leader Alvaro Uribe Vélez used his Twitter account to falsely accuse Daniel of being a “child rapist.” People were completely shocked. In a situation where the satirist is respectable an honest and the political leader is the bully we start to question the authority of those who are running our country.
In the past decade, Daniel has become one of the most celebrated satirists in Colombia, as he is able to expose the truth in a country where we constantly feel like we are lost and abused. In my essay I want to explore the role of Daniel Samper Ospina, not only in the world of comedy and the media, but also in Colombia’s current political climate. I will focus mainly on his award-winning video and on the Uribe controversy, in order to find out how his satirical work can often become more respectable and prestigious than other “sources of truth.”
I am starting my research by exploring the general aspects of political satire in order to understand its initial purposes and its common effects. Then I will focus on Daniel Samper Ospina’s satirical work and I will try to observe how it fits in Colombia’s broader political narrative, especially now that we are one month away from the presidential elections. And lastly, I will focus on the video that I previously mentioned and on the positive and the negative reactions that it received within the political journalism world.
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