Even while it was in power, the Concertación knew that the media, and especially the print media, was ideologically opposed to it. Its strategy, which was particularly successful during the Lagos government, was to woo the media, try to reach a kind of détente, instead of searching for ways of encouraging friendly capital to start up new products and sources.
The massification of e-media has made this task easier, and since the changeover of power in March, two new online sources have joined the already existing El Mostrador and the more investigative CIPER -- El Post, and today, El Dínamo, in which I have published this column.
For now, these online sources of news, information and opinion tend to be read and commented by the commenting classes. Most Chileans get their information from TV, radio, and glancing at the headlines in kiosks. Although newspapers are cheap in Chile, it is common to see groups of people in the morning huddling around news kiosks reading the front pages of various newspapers.
It remains to be seen, then, how the increasing, but so for electronic, diversity of news sources affects Chilean politics. We know that people tend to read things they want to read, both in terms of interests and ideology.
But at least it will be increasingly difficult for anyone to claim the information was not available.
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