Media in Chile functions as an industry; therefore, there are no restrictions regarding who can own one or more media organisations in the country, independent of their trajectories or political and public affiliations. That, however, has an exception with foreign ownership. This context has led to the ownership of larger legacy media houses belonging to holdings (see Indicator E1 – Media ownership concentration national level) in charge of businesspeople whose main profile tends to be commercial, but not exempt from views on politics and society.
Previously, the system of legacy media had more variety. For many years, the Catholic Church and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile owned a competitive television channel now owned by the private holding, Luksic Group. There are still some actors in the media that do not belong to the corporate world, the most important example being the Chilean State owning the public channel, Televisión Nacional del Chile. Its financing, however, is acquired through advertising, adding it as another competitor to the market. Additionally, the three largest universities in the country also own FM radio channels.
This industrial quality of Chilean media allows for people of different backgrounds, influences, and agendas to be visible, be partners, or participate in the boards of several media organisations. For example, a channel now owned by Turner was previously the property of the current President, Sebastián Piñera. There are other examples of people in politics involved in media projects: former treasury minister during the dictatorship, Hernan Büchi, is now a partner in the online outlet El Líbero; and former education minister and daughter of the first transition president, Mariana Aylwin, was a founding member of the online outlet El Dínamo.
In other cases, the affiliation could be indirect, or merely an affinity. However, there are circles of power with strong influence over the media. For example, Radio Cooperativa, which does not belong to the Christian Democratic Party, are transparent about the fact that their editorial guidelines lean towards it, determining the coverage they do of the said collective. Another case is El Mercurio, whose owner in the 1970s, the late Agustín Edwards, lobbied the administration of Richard Nixon for a military coup, and they divulged the regime’s ideas in their pages. However, after the return of democracy, the newspaper has, over the years, won prizes for excellence in their journalistic endeavours. Despite their conservative editorial guidelines, they also employ journalists not necessarily sharing their political views.
The journalists interviewed were not naive about the media industry’s reality. They knew very well they must exercise their professional ethics even within projects where owners and boards have a specific perspective or agenda. However, they defended their capacity to report freely. A journalist summed this up:
I have never seen intervention. I have never considered how owners would or not would not react, when reporting on a topic. One knows who owns the media where they work. I would not write an article against their companies, because I have common sense. I understand, from my colleagues who cover economic issues, that there are no restrictions for writing about the companies they own.
There is a law protecting the exercise of journalistic freedom and the integrity of sources (Ministry Secretary General, 2013). The interviewed editors in charge of newsrooms defended the quality of their work, but they recognised there are calls and pressure on them, because the owners or the members of the board might not always share their expectations. However, how that pressure is exerted, and how influential it is, varied according to each medium and the way in which each director executes their role, whether as a mediator or as a counterpart (see Indicator F5 – Company rules against internal influence on newsroom/editorial staff). One director said:
There has always existed pressure over the directors or editors-in-chief. We get calls and try to balance things out. I would lie to you if I said that these calls had no influence. They do not happen every day and they are not how topics are decided. I try to do good journalism.
Another editor explained: “I do not ask the board whether to publish or not. They advise”. While this pressure does exist, journalists declared this was not a problem when doing their daily work. They mentioned that owners trust directors to safeguard the journalistic work and that they were in charge of protecting the journalists’ freedom to report, and therefore, the pressure was of an assimilated or combined nature. One journalist made a statement that summarised a common view among the interviewees:
Nobody forces you to report against your beliefs; we have a work contract that can be broken in any moment. I have never seen people forced to write against their personal political beliefs. I have personal political views and they are not an impediment to cover a politician who does not represent me.
Additionally, smaller independent projects, which function online and combine reporting and opinion pieces, also exist. Their inner structures imply that owners are part of the newsroom. Therein, a more clearly partisan political agenda can be observed, especially becoming more visible in polarised periods, such as election season.
