Chilean Media Mogul Expelled From Journalists Association

[Judi Lynn]

3. Agustin Edwards' Wikipedia, concerning his work as a "publisher." (Right, "publisher.")

Publisher[edit]

In 1968, Edwards was elected president of the Inter-American Press Association. He founded the association's committee on press freedom, and commissions on technical issues and scholarships. He also is president of the Diarios America Group, another trade organisation.[1]

On 5 September 1970, Edwards met with Henry Kissinger, John N. Mitchell and Richard Helms in Washington to request their financial support in his attempt to oust Marxist Salvador Allende who was about to win the Presidency.[2] Over the following year, Richard Nixon approved three covert payments totalling approximately US$2,000,000 to Edwards so he would use his media empire to help destabilise Chile's democratic process.[3] In the days and years following the military coup of 11 September 1973, Edwards' newspapers published falsifications in order to justify the coup and cover up the human rights violations of President Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.[4] Only after the Rettig Report detailing the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship was released in February 1991 did El Mercurio stop referring to victims of human rights violations as "allegedly missing prisoners".[5]

The Church Report, based on the findings of the U.S. Senate select committee formed in 1975 to investigate illegal activities by intelligence agencies, and released in 1992, referred to Edwards as one of the chief figures participating in Operation Mockingbird in Chile.[3] The Chilean documentary Agustín's Newspaper (2008), which included interviews with John Dinges and several of Edwards' former and current employees, exposed serious cases of disinformation in Edwards publications from the 1960s onwards.[6] Since the overthrow of Pinochet's military dictatorship, a number of journalists have attempted to have Edwards indicted for crimes related to his alleged breaches of journalistic ethics and documented payments from the Central Intelligence Agency.[7] In an interview in El Mercurio in 2000, Edwards defended himself by saying "I honestly think that we always try to simply report what happened. However, there may be serious limitations that cannot be overcome by any means."[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agust%C3%ADn_Edwards_Eastman

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American Imperialism and the Inter American Press Association (IAPA)
17th April 2008

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The IAPA blows

Parallel to its link with dictatorial governments, the history of the American great press cartel records a certain number of aggressions against the constitutionally constituted governments, in equal terms to the imperialist interests in the region. Thus, Garguverich stresses the soon conformation of an axis among the CIA, the IAPA and agencies of news as part of the structure of US domination, making a powerful instrument for the destabilizing plans in Latin America<5>.

Perhaps the most symbolic case of the destabilizing action of the IAPA has been the dirty campaign against the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, who was overthrown in 1973 due to the combination of Chilean reactionary forces and the CIA, since the implementation of a strong psychological war.

Chilean journalist Hernan Uribe affirms that along the whole history of Chile, there was no period in which dominated a freedom of information that even fell into debauchery and in clear violations to professional ethics as in Allende’s term in office. President Allende himself, in 1970, declared to /Prensa Latina/ agency that his government would favor unlimited freedom of press, but would also favor that all the social agents and ideological trends had access to opinion.

“Currently, those rights were officially established, but its practice appears restricted to the minor sectors which had a prominent situation from the financial point of view,” expressed Allende, according the also journalist Ernesto Carmona. His words, obviously, would not please the media magnates. Even less when Allende pointed towards a main topic, indicating that the media in capitalist regimes turned not in instruments of information, but in instruments of misinformations of the people’s interests.

Oriented by the CIA, the Chilean opponent media, headed by the journal /El Mercurio/, could not answer Allende’s request of informing with objectivity and to maintain with nobility their points of view. On the contrary, they devoted to spread lies and to try to give an image of persecution to the press, adding fuel to the fire in which they would cook Pinochet’s dictatorship. For that reason, Allende claimed, on February 12^th 1973, “We are obliged to point out the lack of moral authority and the distorted interest of those who shelter on the Inter American Press Association. We are not concerned about the critics. We not only accept it, we also claim for it.”

Uribe also stresses that it was also the CIA the responsible for directing the great Chilean press and the IAPA members in a campaign of black propaganda against Allende, fact proved by unclassified documents in the United States. On this context, the journal /El Mercurio/, property of Agustin Edwards, who performed as the IAPA vice president, received enough dollars for his campaign against Allende, and he even stopped circulating for a day, pleading threats “in order to form a misinformation scandal which claimed ‘for the closing’ of /El Mercurio/.”

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