Chile

During this period there have been no major incidents affecting freedom of expression. There is, however, a contrary slant in the legal regulations being processed on digital television, giving excessive power to the authorities to establish or limit content, thus restricting editorial freedom. There continues under debate in the Senate a bill that would regulate the introduction in Chile of ground digital television, introduced in 2008. This bill, which initially sought to regulate the migration of the current licensees to this new technology, has turned into a way to give wide powers to the government to influence in television programming and content. Among other things, it would excessively increase the powers of the National Television Council, a body that oversees the correct operation of this medium, empowering it to demand of the stations a certain number of hours a week of cultural programming, civic education and a strengthening of national, regional and local identities. In addition, the stations would be required to promote in their content certain principles such as social, cultural, ethnic, political, religious, sexual orientation and gender identity diversity, among others. While the ends pursued appear to be plausible, they could give rise to discretionary actions which, added to the requirement to broadcast the campaigns of public interest defended by the government, give excessive power to the government to influence in broadcast television content, affecting the right to choose the kind of content that the people want to see. A group of legislators went before the Constitutional Tribunal to challenge a congressional suggestion made to the digital television bill that sought to prohibit the use of online audience measurement systems. The appellants said that this would affect the television channels’ freedom of expression and the right of companies that practice such measurements to engage in a lawful financial activity. On January 9, the Constitutional Tribunal declared that prohibition to be unconstitutional, in that it violated the protected autonomy of the intermediary bodies that put themselves between the individual and the government, as is the case of the media. With that, the Tribunal also held that the measure affected the financial freedom of the television channels, in what refers to their commercial and editorial decisions. The bill to amend the Law on Protection of Personal Details (No. 19,628) which the government introduced in January 2012, could affect the media, as they would also remain subject to the restrictions the law establishes. This bill could bring about a difficulty similar to the one that occurred in Spain when last year the Data Protection Agency received more than 200 requests for the elimination of information contained in media Web sites. This conflict occurred due to the lack of exclusion of the work of the press in the law. The bill was stalled in Congress due to the fact that, according to many legislators, there had not been contemplated sufficient official action to make compliance with the requirements of the Law on Protection of Personal Details. On January 23 this year, the last week before the legislative recess, the government declared its intention to reactivate the bill.