MEDIA-CHILE: Excessive Concentration Hurts Freedom of Speech

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Sánchez

SANTIAGO, Dec 5 2001 (IPS) - Ownership of the media is excessively concentrated in Chile, which undermines the media’s function as a channel of expression for the citizenry, according to a report by the Freedom of Speech Programme at the University of Chile.

The study, “Economic Concentration of the Communication Media” by researchers Guillermo Sunkel and Esteban Geoffroy, states that “freedom of expression and pluralism are compromised, which jeopardises one of the pillars of democracy.”

The print media, radio and TV are in the hands of large economic consortiums, several of which are linked to the most conservative sectors of society, and that concentration undermines pluralism and diversity, the authors warn.

The situation has also led to a perception among the general public that “only those who have money and power are represented” in the media, according to Sunkel and Geoffroy.

Oligopolistic control of media outlets, profound inequalities regarding access to advertising funds, and an increasing weakening of the capacity for local production have stood in the way of the emergence of media capable of reflecting sociocultural diversity, says the study.

Paradoxically, the return to democracy after 17 years of military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet (1973-90) was accompanied by the disappearance of the few independent publications that had emerged in the last few years of the de facto regime.

The independent publications found it impossible to withstand the discrimination by companies and advertising agencies that only did business with media outlets affiliated with the political right, the report adds.

While the economic concentration of the media is not an exclusively Chilean phenomenon, the “marked ideological monopoly” in the press is typically Chilean, say Sunkel and Geoffroy.

That monopoly arises from “a homogeneously conservative business class, educated in a neo-liberal economic mould…where those who differ from that mindset are the exception.

“This is a business class that will not take a gamble for the sake of sociocultural diversity,” the report adds.

Martín Abregú, with the Ford Foundation, the US philanthropic institution that helped finance the study, said “there can be no media independence with the level of concentration to which this report refers.”

At the presentation of the study, the dean of the University of Chile, Luis Riveros, said “economic concentration has a distorting effect,” because “there is nothing more desctructive to democracy than communications media that inform in a one-sided manner.”

The lack of independent media outlets is also linked to political factors. The ruling Coalition of Parties for Democracy, the centre-left alliance that has governed Chile since democracy was restored in 1990, has neither regulated the excessive concentration of property, nor encouraged the creation of new media outlets.

“The policy followed by the governments during the period of the transition (to democracy) has been based on the supposition that the mere development of the industry would itself guarantee freedom of speech and pluralism,” say Sunkel and Geoffroy.

The clearest indications that the market has failed to ensure freedom of speech are the limited number of newspapers and the fact that two large national consortiums have held a dominant position in the market for decades, according to the study.

The daily newspapers El Mercurio, La Segunda and Las Ultimas Noticias are owned by the El Mercurio corporation, which belongs to business tycoon Agustín Edwards Eastman, who is president of 14 regional papers, and has interests in a number of other sectors of the economy as well.

The other major conglomerate is Copesa, in which former officials of the Pinochet regime participate directly or indirectly. Copesa owns a magazine and three newspapers with nationwide circulation.

“The current structure of the press appears to be heavily conditioned by administrative measures decreed by the military government,” which closed down “all newspapers, with the exception of those that belonged to El Mercurio and Copesa,” the researchers state.

“The market has also played an important role in the disappearance of other print media that had emerged in the context of the political struggle against the Pinochet regime in the 1980s,” they add.

With respect to advertising, around 70 percent of the funds are absorbed by the three national newspapers belonging to the El Mercurio corporation – the equivalent of 312 billion dollars in 1998.

In the case of radio, things began to change in the mid-1990s with the entry of foreign consortiums, which have won a dominant position in Santiago.

“The groups that have led this incursion into the national market are Ibero American Radio Chile, comprised of US and Venezuelan capital, and the Consorcio Radial de Chile, founded by the Colombian chain Caracol, which belongs to the Santo Domingo economic group,” says the study.

The authors question the role played by the consortiums regarding freedom of speech and pluralism, pointing out that the introduction of the concept that radio formed part of the “entertainment industry” hurt stations that played a social function.

TV, meanwhile, has experienced a shift in ownership since 1990, when the private sector gained access to TV stations, and later due to the entry of foreign capital.

But unlike public TV in other Latin American countries, Chile’s state-run TVN station remains the market leader.

The study also cites Democracy and the Media, a report edited by Richard Gunther and Anthony Mughan, which calculates the risks to freedom of speech depending on the concentration of media ownership.

“In the case of Chile, there is a negative situation (one company controls more than 40 percent of the audience) with regards to freedom of the press when it comes to daily newspapers in the regions as well as Santiago, and TV in the regions,” say the authors.

“With respect to radio stations (in Santiago and the regions) and TV (in Santiago), there is a dangerous situation, because one company controls more than 20 percent of the audience,” Sunkel and Geoffroy warn.