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Outlet profile

El Tiempo

Colombian center, establishment

Owned byCasa Editorial El Tiempo (CEET), owned by Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo through Grupo Aval, Colombia's largest banking and financial conglomerate
FundingAdvertising revenue, digital and print subscriptions; part of a large private media group with no state funding
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

El Tiempo was founded on January 30, 1911, by lawyer and journalist Alfonso Villegas Restrepo as an organ for Colombia's short-lived Republican Party. Eduardo Santos Montejo, a prominent Liberal politician who would later serve as Colombia's president (1938–1942), purchased the paper in 1913 and steered it toward the Liberal Party, cementing its identity as the voice of Colombia's liberal establishment for most of the twentieth century. The Santos family maintained majority ownership for nearly a century, with family members cycling between the paper's leadership and high political office — most notably Juan Manuel Santos, who served as president from 2010 to 2018 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for Colombia's peace accord with the FARC. In the late 2000s, Spain's Grupo Planeta acquired a 55% stake in Casa Editorial El Tiempo, but in 2012 billionaire banker Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo bought out Planeta and the remaining Santos family shares, consolidating sole ownership. Critics have noted a potential conflict of interest given Sarmiento Angulo's vast banking and construction interests and the paper's business coverage; a 2015 report accused El Tiempo of running paid content as news. Under leftist President Gustavo Petro (2022–2026), El Tiempo drew repeated government criticism and positioned itself as part of a watchdog press coalition against the administration. The paper operates a broad media portfolio through CEET, including the business daily Portafolio and Citytv, and is a member of the Trust Project, signaling a commitment to transparency standards.

Sources

  1. El Tiempo (Colombia) — Wikipedia
  2. El Tiempo — Media Ownership Monitor Colombia
  3. Casa Editorial El Tiempo S.A. — Media Ownership Monitor
  4. Colombia's leading newspaper selling propaganda as news — Colombia Reports
  5. El Tiempo — The Trust Project News Partners
  6. Colombian president ends term with press freedom projects unfinished — RSF
  7. The Making of a Modern Newspaper: El Tiempo in Colombia, 1911–1940 — Scielo

Profile compiled 2026-08-29; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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