Quimy de León, 2024

“We have taken risks to tell the stories emerging from our realities and to seek truth, even when it means challenging power.”

Guatemalan journalist Quimy de León made this statement while receiving CPJ’s 2024 International Press Freedom Award. She was describing the work of Prensa Comunitaria and Ruda, two digital outlets built to cover Indigenous communities, land, gender, environmental conflict, and human rights. Her use of the plural matters. The risk does not belong to a lone heroic reporter, and neither does the knowledge. Correspondents, researchers, community members, and editors together create a record of realities that larger institutions may overlook or distort. Seeking truth becomes a shared practice rooted in places and people who have too often appeared only as subjects of someone else’s narrative.

Community-centered reporting changes who sets the agenda. Instead of arriving only after a crisis becomes nationally visible, journalists can build sustained relationships, learn local history, and understand how policy decisions affect daily life. That proximity can reveal patterns hidden from occasional visitors, but it also requires discipline. Reporters must distinguish advocacy from verification, corroborate accounts, document competing claims, and explain their relationships to the communities they cover. Trust should make questioning more informed, not less rigorous. A source’s dignity and expertise deserve respect, while the public record still needs evidence that readers beyond the community can evaluate.

De León’s phrase also recognizes that challenging power carries unequal consequences. Local reporters may face criminal complaints, surveillance, online attacks, physical threats, or economic pressure without the legal and security resources of a major newsroom. Editors should treat safety as part of the reporting plan: use secure communication, minimize unnecessary identifying details, assess travel and digital risks, and prepare support if a correspondent must relocate. Collaboration can distribute evidence across outlets so that intimidation cannot easily erase an investigation. None of those precautions eliminates danger, but they keep courage from becoming a substitute for institutional responsibility.

The statement remains a useful standard for newsrooms far beyond Guatemala. A complete public record cannot be produced only from official briefings, capital cities, or voices already recognized as authoritative. Journalists should ask which communities are absent, who controls access to information, and whether coverage allows people to describe their own realities in their own terms. They should also return after publication to measure consequences and correct misunderstandings. De León’s vision is not merely about adding more stories. It is about changing the structure of attention so reporting can expose hidden harm, broaden public memory, and make accountability possible where silence once protected power. The strongest community journalism combines local knowledge with transparent methods, careful verification, and a durable commitment to the people whose experience gives the story its meaning.