INRAVISIÓN — Sistema de Medios Públicos del Estado Colombiano S.A.S. (formerly RTVC)

INRAVISIÓN — Sistema de Medios Públicos del Estado Colombiano S.A.S., widely known as RTVC, is Colombia’s national public broadcasting entity. In April 2026 the entity reverted to the historic name INRAVISIÓN — the brand under which Colombia’s public radio and television operated from 1963 to 2004 — a change approved by the shareholders’ assembly and registered with the Chamber of Commerce; it does not alter the entity’s legal nature as a society between public entities linked to the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (MinTIC). The name RTVC remains widely used. The entity dates in its current corporate form to 2004, when it succeeded the original Inravisión.

It runs Colombia’s public television and radio: the cultural television channel Señal Colombia and Canal Institucional, the national public institutional channel, which carries programming from the Presidency, Congress, control bodies and other state institutions; alongside the national public radio stations Radio Nacional de Colombia (dating to 1940, now centred on news and music) and Radiónica (a youth-oriented rock station), plus digital and archive services.

Media assets

Television: Señal Colombia (culture, education, entertainment) and Canal Institucional (Presidency, Congress, control bodies and state institutions)

Radio: Radio Nacional de Colombia and Radiónica.

Ownership and governance

The entity was created in 2004 (Decree 3525) as an indirectly decentralised body, a society between public entities, for public radio and television, linked to the national government. Under Law 1978 of 2019, the government appoints its director, the “manager” (gerente) who heads national public radio and television, and the President exercises oversight through MinTIC; its corporate governance runs through a Junta Directiva (Board of Directors) and an Asamblea General de Accionistas (General Shareholders’ Assembly). This direct government appointment power over the entity’s leadership is the central fact of its governance and the core of its State-Controlled classification.

In April 2024, President Gustavo Petro’s government appointed the journalist and documentary-maker Hollman Morris, long known for human-rights work, and a former manager of Bogotá’s Canal Capital and a Petro political ally, as manager. He remained in the post in 2026, and led the April 2026 reversion to the INRAVISIÓN name. In June 2026, the Procuraduría General de la Nación (the inspector-general) opened a disciplinary investigation into Morris over alleged irregularities linked to the possible use of state media to favour political agendas aligned with the national government, a live illustration of the entity’s exposure to political direction.

Source of funding and budget

The entity is financed principally through public resources. Its funding derives from levies on private radio and television broadcasters (extended in 2019 to include contributions from telecommunications companies) channelled through the Fondo Único de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Fondo Único TIC), into which Law 1978 of 2019 integrated the former FonTV and FonTIC, and which finances public television and multiplatform public-interest content, together with direct budget allocations and some commercial revenue.

Official approved budgets show COP 253.6bn in 2020, COP 301.9bn in 2022, COP 301.5bn in 2023 and COP 385.1bn (about US$98m) in 2024. Public transfers were the dominant income source: in 2024, current transfers accounted for about COP 321.9bn, compared with about COP 35.3bn from sales of goods and services. That predominant reliance on public money, in the absence of a substantial independent commercial base, ties the entity structurally to the government.

Editorial independence

INRAVISIÓN/RTVC has no binding safeguard of editorial independence. It maintains internal regulations, manuals and a “code of integrity” overseen by a collegiate body of its own directors, and Law 1978 of 2019 requires the government to promote public-interest content and citizen participation in public media, but the code speaks generally to the entity’s public-service mission rather than guaranteeing editorial independence, and there is no dedicated mechanism to protect its editorial line from the government that appoints its leadership. External “control entities,” including a citizen-oversight body, monitor the use of state resources, but not editorial autonomy.

The record shows recurring government influence across administrations. Under President Iván Duque, the journalist Santiago Rivas’s programme Los puros criollos was pulled from the air in December 2018 after he criticised a government-backed convergence law; a later recording exposed the removal as deliberate retaliation, with then-manager Juan Pablo Bieri heard describing the journalist’s conduct as “biting the hand that feeds you.” Bieri resigned amid the ensuing scandal, and in his resignation letter thanked the President for his trust, underscoring the close link between the presidency and the directorship. Colombia’s Constitutional Court, in judgment T-203 of 2022, recognised that Bieri had carried out censorship in that case. In March 2024, RTVC journalists and channel officials complained of editorial line-setting and contract precarity, saying the broadcaster was effectively at the government’s disposal.

Under Hollman Morris, appointed in April 2024, critics among the entity’s own journalists have alleged an orientation toward content favourable to his ally, President Petro; the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) has said it documented more than 30 worker testimonies alleging censorship and editorial pressure under Morris. Separately, RTVC’s co-production of a state-funded feature film about Admiral José Prudencio Padilla, in which President Petro was to appear in a cameo, drew controversy in 2026 over public funding and the use of state media for presidential image-making. These reports and allegations, together with the June 2026 Procuraduría investigation, point to the same structural vulnerability: whichever party holds power, the entity’s editorial line has repeatedly been contested through its government-appointed leadership, the defining feature of its State-Controlled status.

AI and digital policy

Colombia has been active on digital and AI policy (it approved CONPES 4144, the National AI Policy, in February 2025, and an AI bill was introduced in 2025) but no comprehensive binding AI law was fully in force as of mid-2026, and SMM found no dedicated editorial AI-governance policy specific to INRAVISIÓN/RTVC. The entity’s digital orientation is nonetheless pronounced: it distributes its television and radio through the RTVCPlay platform and a family of digital-native services, and operates the Señal Memoria archive as a public digital-heritage resource.

Classification rationale

INRAVISIÓN — Sistema de Medios Públicos del Estado Colombiano S.A.S., formerly RTVC, is classified State-Controlled because it is a public media entity linked to MinTIC, led by a government-appointed gerente, financed predominantly through public resources (especially transfers from the Fondo Único TIC) and lacking a binding arm’s-length safeguard that protects its editorial line from the executive. It is not an autonomous public-service broadcaster insulated from the government of the day.

The classification does not turn on which party is in power. The entity has faced government-alignment and censorship allegations under both the Duque administration (the 2018 Los puros criollos case, in which the Constitutional Court recognised censorship) and the Petro administration (the 2026 Procuraduría investigation and the reported worker testimonies). These are structural features of an entity whose leadership answers to the executive, not artefacts of any single administration. That structural exposure is especially visible in 2026, as Colombia enters a presidential transition: the right-wing opposition candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won the June 2026 presidential runoff and is due to take office on 7 August 2026, succeeding Petro, which will hand the incoming government the same appointment power over the public-media leadership that has been central to recent controversies. Its State-Controlled status is unchanged for 2026.

July 2026