Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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In the month between Chile’s 1970 election and Allende’s inauguration, the Economist ran a scare campaign suggesting that it might not be possible to remove Allende from power. On September 12, 1970, eight days after his election victory, the Economist wrote that: “The first question thrown at the irascible Dr Allende, whose truculence bodes ill for his enemies, was whether he would hold free elections in 1976.” The text, which ran under the header “But can they vote him out again?,” continued: “Having voted him into power, many Chileans are starting to wonder whether they will be able to vote him out again.”
✏️ Media begins its propaganda campaign against Allende and Chilean democracy 🔗 View Highlight
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Once Allende’s Popular Unity government was in power, the Economist published a series of articles ginning up the possibility of a coup, or even civil war, in Chile.
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“The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr Allende… . Their coup was homegrown, and attempts to make out that the Americans were involved are absurd.”
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“The junta has been the victim of a campaign of organised hostility in the west as well as of its own mistakes”.
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“Perhaps the imposition of martial law, the mass interrogations and the summary execution of snipers would not have aroused so much criticism if there were a clearer understanding of the events that precipitated the coup.”
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the Economist’s Latin American editor was a man named Robert Moss. Recently declassified UK files show that Moss was “an IRD contact.” In other words, he was an asset of the Foreign Office’s secret Cold War propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD).
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UK Foreign Office helped the Economist both downstream and upstream — by influencing its journalists’ output and assisting with the magazine’s distribution.
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Moss’s activities in Chile involved writing “negative stories on Allende almost every week” for the Economist,