Poderopedia, a Chilean organization that works to bring transparency to power structures that run Latin American countries, has released Media Map (“Mapa de Medios”), a database detailing media ownership and concentration in Chile and Colombia.
The Association of Journalists of Chile (Colegio de Periodistas de Chile) has called for a change to Chilean law concerning freedom of expression in light of a Supreme Court ruling that upheld a sentence of 18 months in prison for defamation (injurias) for the directors of weekly publication El Ciudadano.
While a fire continues to ravage the Chilean city of Valparaíso since Saturday April 12, the country’s National Council of Television (CNTV) has received up to 81 complaints for television networks’ coverage of the natural disaster, reported the daily La Nación.
The website of the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIPER) in Chile was hacked on Thursday, Feb. 27, for the second time this year.
Eight reporters were arrested on Monday Jan. 27 during a protest against the sale of the Chilean newspaper La Nación. The protest took place during the meeting of shareholders where the sale of the 97-year-old newspaper was finalized.
Journalism organization Reporters Without Borders criticized Chilean President Sebastián Piñera's veto of the Chilean Digital Television Law considering it a "deviation from the idea of pluralism, [one that] favors the economic interests of a few at the cost of real pluralism," said the group's website.
Chilean journalist Claudia Urquieta from the online newspaper El Mostrador highlighted the importance of Chile’s transparency law as an investigative tool during the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas’ 11th Austin Forum
In late 2012 Chilean journalist Miguel Paz, an ICFJ Knight International Journalism fellow, launched with a group of colleagues a data journalism platform called Poderopedia, which helps reveal the network of relationships between business and government elites in Chile.
Agustín Edwards Eastman, owner of the Chilean newspapers El Mercurio and La Segunda, admitted last week to meeting with former CIA director Richard Helms and former U.S. National Security advisor Henry Kissinger shortly after the election of then-Chilean president Salvador Allende, The Santiago Times reported. The statement was made during his testimony in a trial investigating possible illegal activities by the media leading up to the 1973 coup, heightening the level of scrutiny El Mercurio has received for years regarding its role during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Not all media outlets were accomplices to the disinformation campaign that prevailed in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, said Marcelo Castillo, president of the Journalists’ Association in Chile, in response to declarations made by President Sebastián Piñera to the foreign press, and previously, to Chilean newspaper La Tecera.