Press Freedoms in Chile

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Press Freedoms in Chile

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When commenting on Hugo Chavez' shutdown of RCTV in Venezuela, Chile's president Michelle Bachelet kept the rhetoric cool but said that "freedom of expression is the Golden Rule for Chile".

I always thought the Golden Rule had to do with hypocrisy: "Do unto others as you'd have done unto you". Which is an interesting concept for Chile's president to bring up when discussing press freedoms internationally.

Sure, Chile is no Venezuela, and they haven't shut down any RCTV recently. But Chile's current government certainly hasn't helped in resuscitating the country's largest liberal daily, the Clarín, that thrived until Pinochet axed it over 30 years ago. Now, while El Mercurio and La Tercera dominate the Chilean newspaper market with a formidable conservative duopoly, (and the press is ironically even less ideologically diverse than it was during the latter days of Pinochet's rule), the government officially laments the press' poor reflection of Chile's liberal populace yet, at the same time, is "fighting tooth and nail against [Clarín's] re-emergence".

That's what I got from John Dinges' Columbia Journalism Review piece entitled The Curious Case of Victor Pey. Read the article here.