Silenciando la Crítica
By Kristin Neubauer Posted Jul 1 2002
Hundreds of people demonstrate in San Salvador Jan. 14, to demand government aid and housing for the thousands affected by earthquakes in 2001. TV12 had reported earlier that the government was inefficiently distributing the aid. Their earthquake coverage fueled a controversy that almost resulted in the closing of its news division.
- AP/ VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO
The late morning heat was nearly peaking when the earthquake shook the capital city of San Salvador.
Gaudily painted buses barreled through the streets and spewed thick, dark clouds of exhaust. Sidewalk vendors cooking tortillas or peddling plastic baggies filled with Coca-Cola appeared on every corner. Teenagers poured into the air-conditioned mall. Suddenly, the ground began to rumble and shake for 45 seconds. Hundreds of people died while thousands of homes collapsed, and one massive hilltop landslide buried an entire suburban community. The quake had a magnitude of 7.6. It was one of the largest ever to hit the small Central American nation.
With communities devastated, roads buried and phone lines broken, the directors of what many regard as the country’s only independent television station, TV12, decided to air a call-in show for several hours daily where Salvadorans could ask questions about friends and relatives in other parts of the country. As days passed and international aid began to arrive, the station reported that the government was inefficiently distributing the aid. It aired pieces that highlighted outlying communities where poor farmers and their families were desperate and often in tears for lack of food or clothing.
TV12 soon started drawing heat. The Salvadoran television station began broadcasting 18 years earlier during the country’s long civil war and had grown used to criticism. After the earthquake on Jan. 13, 2001, TV12 suddenly found itself in the fire again. This time, though, the pressure came through the circuitous route of Mexico. Seventy five percent of TV12 is owned by the Mexican television giant, TV Azteca, and five days after the disaster, TV12’s news director, Mauricio Funes, received an unexpected, late-night phone call from his boss in Mexico, Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
The irate television executive told the TV12 news chief that he had received a call from his country’s own president, Vicente Fox. Fox said that President Francisco Flores of El Salvador had called him to complain that Funes was reporting lies by saying that his administration was stealing the international aid flowing into El Salvador.
Funes denied the Salvadoran president’s charge, and over the next 20 minutes he explained TV12’s policy for covering the quake. In Mexico, Pliego hung up mollified, confident in the objectivity of his Salvadoran affiliate and its journalists. He decided to send a TV Azteca envoy to El Salvador the next day to speak directly with President Flores and to invite him on TV12 for an interview.
But the controversy did not go away. Flores refused to grant TV12 an interview. Salvadoran government officials and the nation’s most conservative newspaper, El Diario de Hoy, publicly attacked Funes and TV12’s reporting. At the same time, the Flores administration and private businesses waged a severe advertising boycott against TV12 that led to the firing of 29 employees. Meanwhile, executives in Mexico talked about closing the news division of TV12.
A New Kind of News
TV12, known in its early years as Channel 12, was founded in 1984, quickly boasting two highly rated news programs that brought both significant viewership and advertising. In 1986, 52-year-old multimillion-dollar media businessman Jorge Zedan, who had owned seven Salvadoran radio stations and a newspaper, bought Channel 12. El Salvador was then in the middle of its 12-year civil war, and due to death-squad violence, several journalists had been killed and many independent media outlets had been closed. Zedan, however, wanted to expand and make Channel 12 a new forum where the left-wing rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing government could both air their views. This was a novel idea in an era when most of the country’s media was dominated by government propaganda.
“I thought that if we could make a space where both sides could say what they believed, it would be easier to foster communication. Instead of killing, they would talk,” said Zedan, who immediately hired the 28-year-old Mauricio Funes as a legislative correspondent. Funes had been working as a reporter for the government’s TV network.
“Mauricio had the reputation as a clean journalist, an upright journalist, an independent journalist,” Zedan remembered.
The First Problems
The network faced its most serious problem to that point in October 1988 when Funes flew to Costa Rica to conduct an hour-long interview with FMLN commander Joaquin Villalobos, the first he had ever granted to a journalist. But Zedan and Funes both realized airing the interview would bring unwelcome consequences.
“Today, it’s very easy to interview whatever FMLN leader,” Funes said. “But in 1988, in the middle of the war, it wasn’t easy to make that decision to interview an FMLN commander at the level of Joaquin Villalobos.”
The Salvadoran government, led by President Jose Napoleon Duarte threatened to block the interview by blacking out Channel 12’s signal, but the piece ran anyway, and the station alerted viewers of government interference by flashing “Censored by the Government” on the screen.
Like other Salvadoran news media, Channel 12 depended on both government-paid public-service an- nouncements and private sponsors. As a result of the Villalobos interview, however, the government and many private businesses with government ties pulled their ads from the station.
“Because we had aired the interview, they saw that as a favor to the FMLN. And since the FMLN was their enemy, they decided that Channel 12 had passed into the hands of the enemy,” explained Funes.
Pressure did not let up after the election of President Alfredo Cristiani. In June 1990, Channel 12 ran an interview with another high-profile FMLN commander. Again, the government and private businesses withdrew advertising.
The pressure however, was not just economic. Zedan, Funes and other Channel 12 reporters received frequent death threats against themselves and their families.
But after a 1992 peace treaty ended the war, the network entered a period of relative tranquility. Funes was promoted to news director and hosted what soon became Salvador’s highest rated morning show, “Interview of the Day.” Nevertheless, many Salvadoran businesses refused to advertise on the station, and government ads remained slight.
Zedan used income from his other businesses to keep Channel 12 on the air until 1996 when he sold controlling interest of the station to TV Azteca, which was looking to expand its holdings throughout Central America. The company renamed the station TV12 and requested Zedan, who still owned 25 percent, to stay on as president and manage the station.
Tremors for TV12
Just as things seemed to be settling down for TV12, the massive earthquake struck on Jan. 13, 2001. With the country in tatters, Funes and Zedan decided to air a call-in show for several hours every day, and Salvadorans used it mainly to try and find out the fate of loved ones dispersed throughout the country.
But as international aid dribbled into desperate communities at an alarmingly slow pace, many callers began criticizing the Flores administration and accusing the government of stealing the aid. Within days, some TV12 phone lines became mysteriously jammed. Moreover, Funes and Zedan were unable to prevent many callers from making unsubstantiated accusations, so they decided to cancel the program. However, TV12 continued to report on its news shows that the government was sluggish in getting the aid to communities.
Only four days after the quake, the conservative newspaper, El Diario de Hoy, accused TV12 of falsifying reports and attacked Funes as a journalist without credibility and a “left-wing sympathizer”. Funes defended himself and his station on the air that night, and two days later, the newspaper published another editorial critical of Funes that read: “He thinks North Korea is a free country, he thinks the Berlin Wall should remain standing, he is a friend of Fidel Castro.”
Meanwhile, Funes and Zedan said Salvadoran President Flores refused to give an interview or to discuss the situation with TV12, despite the overture of TV Azteca envoy Ricardo Medina. Presidential spokes- man Carlos Rosales denied a meeting with TV Azteca even occurred. Funes, Zedan and an internal TV Azteca document claimed Flores then called President Fox to put pressure on Funes, but President Flores denied he called the Mexican president to complain about TV12.
As the dispute intensified, the Flores administration began withdrawing substantial amounts of advertising according to TV12 financial documents. Though spokesman Rosales denied the government withheld any advertising, TV Azteca executives in Mexico began to worry as they saw their Salvadoran affiliate losing money. For several weeks, TV Azteca seriously considered closing the news operation of TV12 and filling it with movies and Mexican soap operas, but Zedan, the Salvadoran stalwart, refused to let that happen or to fire Funes, as rumors were suggesting.
More than a year has passed since the Jan. 13 quake, and Zedan said the crisis has ended. The news division remains at TV12, and the Salvadoran Government has reinstated some of the advertising it cut after the earthquake. Although President Flores still has not spoken to TV12, other administration officials have since given interviews. Making ends meet financially is still difficult, but Zedan said: “We’re surviving.”
For almost 16 years, owner Zedan and newsman Funes have nurtured the channel, seen it through several crises and defended it and themselves against lots of criticism. Despite TV12’s high ratings, they know that many among the Salvadoran elite do not trust them.
“Some people think we’re financed by the left-wing; they think we’re tied to the FMLN,” said Funes, who denied that TV12 has any left-wing connection.
Despite those allegations, many other Salvadorans see the channel as a reliable source for news, and this is a sentiment reflected in the high ratings. Random interviews across El Salvador seem to confirm people’s trust in TV12.
One shopkeeper in the East said, “Channel 12 is the only information we can trust.” A gas station attendant in the South said, “I only watch Channel 12.” One taxi driver in San Salvador said, “Mauricio Funes is a brave journalist.” And a father in a Western city said, “Channel 12 is not beholden to the government.”
Funes is encouraged by these reactions, but he knows that more work lies ahead for him, Zedan and the rest of TV12: “In March [of 2001], I was afraid that the channel was going to close. So because of this, every day that our programs air, every day that our editorials air, for me, is a victory.”