All media organisations constituted in Chile are legally obliged to publish the name and address of the legal representative or owner, as well as the director responsible for content, in a visible place (Ministry Secretary General, 2013). It is also compulsory to disclose detailed information about the medium’s ownership for whoever requests it, and in case this doesn’t happen, any person can denounce the medium in question. Additionally, Chile has a Transparency Law forcing public organisations to make their information available to citizens. As a result, the public television channel has its financial status, salaries, and management board data displayed on its website. Such details are not readily available for private media, unless they voluntarily decide to make it public. The information is irregular within the corporate websites of each medium – usually with a commercial objective, rather than for reasons of transparency. A recent study on the television industry rated the public channel TVN as the most transparent, followed by CHV, Mega, and Canal 13, especially regarding economic information (López-López et al., 2019).
Regarding print media, all publications must register with the National Library, which also functions under transparency laws, thereby making this another way to access ownership information. However, this process needs a specific request, and receiving an answer can take several months. A similar thing happens with every change in the ownership of a medium, which must be informed to the National Economic Prosecutor, an entity that also answers to the law.
No other entity constantly monitors the ownership of media, except for individual efforts by researchers and academics.
