Why we (still) need to talk about Chile's El Mercurio (Nixon, CIA-funded propaganda instrument)

[Judi Lynn]

We examine coverage and CIA funding of the paper that supported the 1973 Chilean coup and the following dictatorship.
14 Sep 2019 10:33 GMT


Produced by: Marcela Pizarro and Flo Phillips

Frequently on The Listening Post, we are warned about getting too close to the story. Like a lens that zooms in too close, there is always a danger that proximity blurs our vision.

Yet, zoom-in we did, to a blurred image of fighter jets bombing La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace on September 11, 1973. That image may have made front pages around the world, but in Chile, media coverage of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, was kept to a bare minimum.

One of those papers was the country's conservative daily, El Mercurio, whose headline simply stated: "The military now controls the country." This was an outlet that did not just report on the story, but had become an integral part of it.

Three years earlier, days after Salvador Allende became the first democratically-elected Marxist president, El Mercurio's owner, Agustin Edwards, flew to Washington, DC and sat down with the then-CIA Director Richard Helms - urging him for support in a military coup.

It was the height of the Cold War and the United States had looked on nervously as socialist movements - and Soviet influence - gathered apace around the continent.

Years later, declassified US CIA documents revealed how the CIA pumped millions of dollars into El Mercurio to spearhead a propaganda campaign against Allende's government.

More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/09/talk-chile-el-mercurio-190914083123442.html

The video with the article is extremely important. Please take the time to listen to it if you have 26 minutes.