Chilean coverage 1960-1965-1971, by three U.S. dailies

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-194)In this study the coverage of Chile by the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively for 1960, 1965 and 1971. In each of these years Chile was governed by three different political parties. In 1960 it was ruled by the Democratic Front, a right wing group. In 1965 Chile was ruled by the Christian Democratic party, a left of-center movement, and in 1971 Chile was under a socialist-marxist coalition called the Popular Unity party.\ud The three newspapers selected as a sample were chosen because the Chicago Tribune has a clear conservative tendency. In contrast to the Tribune, the Post was used for its liberal tendency and the Los Angeles Times was used because it is the major West coast newspaper in the U.S. In Los Angeles a great number of Latin's live which might have made the Times cover more Latin American news, as a service to its public.\ud The analysis of the articles from Chile were broken down into headline, lead and body. Each was analyzed separately. First, the theme was classified as political, economic or social and then the direction of the headline, lead and body of the article was categorized as violent (information dealing with riots, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, diseases, accidents), non-violent (information which does not portray violent matters, which does not call to the attention of the readers emotions), neutral (information which contains both, violent and non-violent matters).\ud It was found that mainly short articles were written about Chile in the three years surveyed. Also, mostly wire services were used as a source and few correspondents sources were employed. It was found that leads of the articles tended to be more violent than headlines and body of the articles. (See more in text.