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Award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most influential voices and responsible for some of the country's most explosive investigations in the past 15 years, will deliver the keynote address at the 19th Ibero-American Journalism Colloquium, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas announced Wednesday.
The Colloquium will take place Sept. 19, 2026, one day after the 27th International Symposium on Journalism(ISOJ). Both conferences are organized by the Knight Center and will be held at The University of Texas at Austin.
Registration for ISOJ is required to participate in the Colloquium. Click here to register to attend in person or virtually and then sign up for the Colloquium. Participants registered to attend ISOJ and the Colloquium virtually will be eligible to receive a certificate of participation from the Knight Center.
Aristegui has more than three decades of experience in radio, television and digital media. She recently ended her program on CNN en Español after 20 years on the air, a collaboration that expanded her audience across Latin America and the United States. In 2012, she founded Aristegui Noticias, an independent news platform that has gained a reputation for its investigations into politics, corruption and abuses of power.
Aristegui launched the news site after publishing an investigation in 2014 into the so-called White House of former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto(opens in new tab). Aristegui’s team revealed that the multimillion-dollar mansion where Peña Nieto lived was legally registered to a real estate company owned by a friend of the president and government contractor. Following the investigation, her former broadcaster fired two members of her team(opens in new tab). The broadcaster also fired Aristegui(opens in new tab) after the journalist demanded that her colleagues be reinstated.
Her team has frequently faced criticism and attacks, including attempts at online surveillance and the ransacking of their newsroom. Her work has earned her numerous honors, including the 2008 María Moors Cabot Prize and the El Confidencial International Award for Investigative Journalism, presented by the King and Queen of Spain this year for the investigation Televisa Leaks. In that investigation, Aristegui’s team revealed leaked documents describing how Mexican broadcaster Televisa fabricated news, orchestrated smear campaigns and manipulated information.
“It will be a great honor for us to welcome to the Ibero-American Journalism Colloquium one of the most important journalists in Mexico, respected and admired not only in her country but throughout Ibero-America for her courage and professional skill, grounded in ethical values and the best investigative techniques,” said Rosental Calmon Alves, founder and director of the Knight Center.
He added: “Carmen Aristegui has been an inspiration to new generations of journalists through her radio and television programs, her news site, her interviewing style and her courage to lead and publish investigations that expose corruption, based on information that is so thoroughly verified that it is indisputable.”
Aristegui will open the Colloquium, a Spanish-language conference that since 2008 has brought together journalists and media leaders from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal to discuss their shared challenges.
This year’s Colloquium will feature presentations by other leaders in Ibero-American journalism, including Alfredo Corchado, executive director of Puente News Collaborative (U.S.); José Zamora, regional director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists; Roberto Rock, founder and director of La Silla Rota (Mexico); Laura Aguirre, co-founder and strategic director of Alharaca (El Salvador/Germany); and Clavel Rangel Jiménez, co-founder of the Amazonian Venezuelan Journalists Network (Venezuela).
The conference will focus on topics like sustainability, launching independent news organizations, U.S.-Mexico border coverage, disinformation and fact-checking in the age of artificial intelligence, and solutions journalism, among others.
The Colloquium will build on the discussions that start during ISOJ, which this year will take place Sept. 17-18 and focus on two of the most urgent issues facing journalism: strengthening audience trust at a critical moment for democracies around the world and the future of news in the age of artificial intelligence.
ISOJ will offer simultaneous English-to-Spanish interpretation for both in-person and virtual attendees. The Colloquium will be held entirely in Spanish, with no interpretation.