Media wars in Latin America

Abstract

South America veteran journalist O’Shaughnessy reports:” During the Cold War the opponents of reform throughout Latin America, fearing the loss of their privileges that any change in the status quo would bring about…set aside arguments that the fight against poverty would put money into the pockets of those who did not have any, expand the market and thus benefit local and international trade, allowing everyone to gain. And their self-seeking views were well received in Western capitals. Many in Washington and London favoured dictators who claimed to be fighting for what they called “Western Christian civilisation”: Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina and the assorted generals in Brazil.” And now “those opponents of change can no longer employ Cold War arguments and have had to find new ways of fighting the battle against reform. They have decided to try and deny the reformers legitimacy and strip them of their authority, using the media as frontline combat troops.” The media that support the cause of reform are weak, he says, consisting as they do of few newspapers and even fewer television channels, and with continuing struggles about poverty, wealth and semantics in Latin America, there is no sign these media tensions will end any time soon.