It happened without prior notice, or without the prior authorization of the National Television Commission (CNTV)the regulatory entity of the sector in Chile. June 16, Telecanalone of the general television of Chile, stopped issuing its usual canned local programming and advertising, replacing it with the RT signal in Spanish, the canal of the Kremlin banned in Europe and the US at the beginning of the Ukraine War and identified by the EU as “tool” of the Kremlin that “threat” the security In receiving countries. Something like in Spain, ‘four’ or ‘La Trece’ suddenly suspended their broadcasts and gave them to a propaganda chain linked to a foreign government involved in a devastating war.
The subsequent protests, not only of political parties, but also of specialized academics were immediately answered by Mauricio AmpueroChilean star communicator in RT, with arguments already wielded in other parts of the world and summarized in the supposed “lack of pluralism” in critical countries, or the right of viewers to “know more”, one of the traditional slogans of the audiovisual platform to captivate audiences outside Russia. “I thought it would be welcome, pure pluralism, right? But the first reaction was to cry out for censorship,” the presenter lashed out, before giving way to a series of street interviews to citizens who, without exception, supported the dissemination of the Russian audiovisual platform.
The great importance that the Kremlin grants to this new television sticker nailed to a Latin American country, a priority region for Moscow’s influence campaigns, experts coincide, it was immediately relieved. Not only The Russian Embassy In Santiago de Chile, the Chilean voices that protested by the measure, but also third in the controversial Moscow the sanctioned spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, also third Maria Jajárova. “The appearance of Russian media on Chilean television was not exempt from a campaign to discredit politicians and pro -western media … The objectivity and professionalism of Russia Today has won a deserved credibility in many parts of the world,” he proclaimed.
First questioning
Debates about the propaganda character of RT apart, the first questioning that Chilean experts and academics make has nothing to do with the contents, or with the origin of the audiovisual platform. The chain emits through the signal of a channel whose property Ultimately falls to Mexican businessman Remigio Ángel González, nicknamed ‘the ghost’, who, according to journalistic and academic investigations, also holds the control of another general channel, called the network, which, in the opinion of Pedro AnguitaProfessor of the Faculty of Communication at the University of Los Andes, the law flagrantly violates: “The television sector is regulated by laws 18.838 and 19,733; the same concessionaire cannot have more than one frequency; it is the first transgression of the law.” The second has to do with the absence of prior authorization of the corresponding authority. “The law allows the assignment of the signal, but not in this way; beyond that (RT) is Russian, Polish or Pakistani, what Telecanal did at least required the authorization of the authorization of the CNTV and the National Telecommunications Undersecretariat“, Criticity Critic.
The contents are being examined with magnifying glass by the experts, in case they are constitutive of violation of the legislation on propaganda electoralprecisely when the Andean country faces the final stretch of the Presidentials of November 16 marked by polarization and in which a battle between extreme left and right options is emerging. “From September we have to see what RT does before the elections; in Chile there is a mandatory electoral strip, and it is regulated in time and technique, not content,” he warns Maria José Labrador, Director of the Center for Applied Communication Studies (CECA) at the University of Development, in Santiago, Chile.
This academic, however, confirms a great ignorance In his country regarding the origin of RT and what meant in Europe, including within the CNTV itself, which is the institution that will finally decide on the legality of the operation. “It is necessary (in Chile) a deepest analysisbecause it is a channel that transmits Official communications of the Government, global messages financed by the State, uses social networks as a weapon, and of course it resorts to misinformation, a potential foreign interference “that could”Bringing solidity and stability“From Chilean democracy, remember.
Las decreed sanctions So far against Telecanal they have been limited, of an equivalent amount 1,200 euros, for superfluous reasons such as Do not respect pluralism Issue Inadequate contents For children’s schedules. But what Anguita and Labrador academics demand that the regulatory entity ends at once with the irregularity that the same entrepreneur possesses indirectly two channels in which he barely invests money and with those he performs dark operations. “It seems as if (the owner) only interested having this passive investment waiting for someone to buy something, get Some revenue“, Adventure the professor of the University of the Andes.” They are two underutilized and poorly paid channels; There is sufficient merit for the CNTV to expire the concession and tender it to other operators, “he concludes.
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