Spoilers of the Peace: Elites and the News Media in El Salvador (1992-2019)

Abstract

Postwar El Salvador’s media sector has grown and diversified, particularly with the rise in digital news outlets. However, media ownership remains concentrated in the hands of a few powerful business groups whose commercial pursuits prevail over the public interest. Although media corporations benefit from generous advertising budgets, they have proved complicit with successive governments, irrespective of the party in power. The little investigative journalism that exists has helped expose public corruption and offered a more fair-minded picture of the country’s powerful gangs, but it has not spurred an overall production of more critical and responsible information coverage. Rather than supporting the fight against the impunity of those who engage in corrupt practices and perpetrate human rights violations, the media help old and new elites in resisting structural reforms and offer platforms for personal and political. Fake news sites run the risk of deepening existing levels of political polarization and imperiling El Salvador’s still fragile democracy.