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Uruguay The Media
Uruguay's long tradition of freedom of the press was
severely
curtailed during the twelve years of military
dictatorship,
especially its final years under Lieutenant General
Gregorio
Alvarez Armelino (1981-85). During his administration,
more than
thirty news organizations, including radio stations,
publications, and television stations, were closed. On his
first
day in office in March 1985, Sanguinetti reestablished
complete
freedom of the press. His government also abrogated a
regulation
that compelled all international news agencies to supply a
copy
of all disseminated political news to the Ministry of the
Interior.
Although newspapers have played an important role in
the
evolution of Uruguayan party politics, they were generally
affiliated with and dependent on one or the other of the
traditional parties. This combination of party dependence
before
the military regime and censorship during it prevented the
press
and the media in general from developing into a Fourth
Estate.
After freedom of the press was restored in 1985, however,
Montevideo's newspapers (which accounted for all of
Uruguay's
principal daily newspapers) greatly expanded their
circulations
and presumably increased their influence (see
table 18,
Appendix). Most of the twenty-five to thirty interior
newspapers
were biweekly, except for a couple of regional dailies.
Well over 100 periodicals were published in Uruguay.
Búsqueda (Search) was Uruguay's most important
weekly news
magazine. Founded in 1971, Búsqueda had close links
to
civilian economic officials in the Sanguinetti and Lacalle
governments and served as an important forum for political
and
economic analysis. A right-of-center, independent
publication,
Búsqueda had a liberal editorial policy that
espoused free
markets, free trade, and private enterprise and
competition.
Although it sold only about 16,000 copies a week, its
estimated
readership exceeded 50,000. The educational economic
status of
its readers placed them among the top 3 or 4 percent of
the
population.
Other periodicals included the PDC's Aquí, a
weekly
founded in late 1984; the monthly Cuadernos de
marcha,
founded in 1985 by Carlos Quijano--who founded the former
weekly
procommunist newspaper Marcha in 1939--and
associated with
the Broad Front; Zeta, a weekly founded in 1986 and
affiliated with the PGP; and Maté amargo, a
fortnightly
published by the Tupamaros with an estimated readership of
53,000. An additional 100 periodicals were imported from
foreign
countries.
Fifteen foreign wire services had offices in
Montevideo.
Persons affiliated with the National Party established
Uruguay's
first private international news agency, PRESSUR, in 1984.
The
Sanguinetti government had its own official news service,
the
Presidential Information Service (Servicio Presidencial de
Información--SEPREDI), presumably retained by Lacalle with
a new
staff. The leading press associations were the Association
of
Newspapers of Uruguay, the Uruguayan Press Association,
and
the National Association of Uruguayan Broadcasters
(Asociación
Nacional de Broadcasters Uruguayos--ANDEBU).
Data as of December 1990
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