Latin American Media & The State: Beyond the Old Symbiosis

Abstract

Observers of Latin America have long regarded the pervasive relationship between the region’s governments and its privately owned media, especially its TV-based conglomerates and its often oficialista newspapers, as one of accommodation or interdependence. For much of the twentieth century, hegemonic governments, whether military dictatorships or the lengthy dictablanda perpetrated by Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), prolonged their rule in part by relying on compliant media to collectively act as a ministry of propaganda; in turn, TV hegemons such as Brazil’s Grupo Globo, Mexico’s Televisa, and El Salvador’s Eserski family were permitted to maintain their quasi-monopolistic status, while newspapers retained generous state subsidies, which in most cases they needed for their survival.