“Latin America has a long tradition of monopolies and cronyism in the media and  independent spaces are hard to find, even today,” says Daniel Eilemberg, one of the directors of Reporte Virtual, a new documentary reportage digital platform that aims to offer a fresh look at the political, economic and social situation of this region.

Launched in 2008 by Eilemberg and his longtime partner Isaac Lee, Reporte Virtual attempts to be a site of civic participation, in which people can feel free to tell their stories through video documentaries, without editorial or economic constrains, and providing coverage to the issues that conventional media are ignoring.

The website, as well as the documentaries, are both in Spanish and English allowing them to have a wider audience and also more diversity among people interested on participating with Reporte Virtual. And although there are several video sites, many of them specialized documentary, Eilemberg assures that none of them allows users to use others´ material as Reporte Virtual does.

“We believe it is a good time to give the audience another vision of what they usually receive from traditional media,” says Eilemberg, who wants to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet, as it is lowering access costs and increasing network capacity.

Originally from Colombia, Eilemberg who now lives in Miami, has extensive journalistic experience and not surprisingly has find in new digital platforms alternative solutions for gaining media independence. Aside from Reporte Virtual, Eilemberg and his partner are developing an online news site to break through the barriers of censorship and media control in Mexico to be launched early next year, and that will be replicated in other countries of the region.

Interestingly enough, it was the editors´ own fascination with documentaries what triggered Reporte Virtual. “In 2008 my partner and I made a documentary for National Geographic, telling for the first time the true story of Operation Checkmate conducted by the military intelligence in Colombia (the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and other Colombian soldiers and police lasted into captivity by several years now in the hands of the FARC),” remembers Eilemberg.

The experience was so enriching that they decided they wanted to continue through this path. “The documentary is a very good format for short stories at a low production cost but with the highest journalistic standards, which allows us to tell the stories that the media in Latin America are not telling, either by pressure from the government or private interests.”

Freedom of expression constitutes a problem all over the world. According to Freedom House´s Freedom of the Press index that assess media independence in countries, in 2007 freedom of the press decreased significantly on a global scale continuing with a six-year downward trend. The small improvements that took place in some countries were eclipsed by a “continued, relentless assault on independent news media by a wide range of actors, in both authoritarian states and countries with relatively open media environments.”

However, in the case of Latin America the region has a long story of obstacles for media opening. Violence against journalists, authoritarian laws and policies that chill assertive reporting, and the oligarchic ownership of the media, mainly television, have diminished free press in the region. Furthermore, according to Freedom House, an “independent watchdog organization that supports the expansion of freedom around the world,” the region’s conditions put it under a partly free press category.

www.freedomhouse.org

This is what pushed Reporte Virtual´s editors to build the site and try to give voice and space to those who are interested on reporting their country´s situation.

For the time being, the editors are producing almost every original documentary to show what they are doing and invite others to replicate it, although they had received some material as well. These videos have got great coverage by the media and allowed them to bring attention to the site. “The next step that we are hoping to take soon is to offer all the material we have of each video (the full interviews and all the raw material) and allow people to use it as they see fit to create new versions of the documentary, with its own point of view,” explains Eilemberg.

When this happens, the selection criteria should not be too harsh. The editorial board that comprises journalists, documentarians and filmmakers will choose the best documentaries that had been sent to the site, considering factors such as the quality of content, the relevance of the story, the veracity of what it is been said in the documentary, and the production quality before determining which videos will be uploaded. But the main objective is to democratize the process of storytelling giving the user the full context, which seems like a pretty innovative concept.

In order to incentive participation, Reporte Virtual offers a $2,000 price to the best piece each month and it´s offering to award the best documentary of the year with a production incentive of $20,000.00.

For the moment, Reporte Virtual remains under construction but they are now in talks with several TV channels to produce mini-documentaries for them, and show the best that have been sent so far. “We also believe in having an open platform and today you can take any of our videos and “embed it” on your own site. We are also on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter so we can get to a broader audience.”

If they achieve to become the civic engagement space that they are aiming at, they might indeed begin to democratize expression in a region where empowerment has been so vertical for centuries.