Journalism in Chile: interview with Luis Alejandro Valdebenito

“We need a media law that warranties the informative pluralism. A law that regulates, warranties and penalizes”, he says. Photo: courtesy

Luis Alejandro Nitrihual Valdebenito is a Chilean journalist, professor and researcher. He currently works at the Centro de Investigación Comunicación, Discurso y Poder at the Universidad de La Frontera (Temuco, Chile). He has a PhD in Information Sciences and in Hispanic American Literature from the Complutense University of Madrid. Editor of the newspaper El Cronista Independiente and columnist for Le Monde Diplomatique and Cooperativa (in Chile) and Publico (in Spain), his studies also include a special focus on media ownership and literary criticism.

El asalto de la Oligarquía. Medios de Comunicación y Sociedad neoliberal en Chile (2016); Más allá de la crítica I (2017); Viviendo el Estado de Excepción (2020); Pensar la crítica. Función de la crítica literaria chilena. Siglo XIX. (2021); Ubicar y Detener (2021) and La máquina de Kafka (2018) are some of his recent works. Find out more in the interview below.

Enio Moraes Júnior - How do you evaluate the coverage of human rights and minorities in the Chilean media?

Luis Alejandro Valdebenito - First of all, there should be a distinction among the traditional means of communication, which we know as “mainstream”, from the alternative ones; such as, digital platforms and social media. I think about the traditional means, that in Chile as…