Chile
In a mostly private media system, traditional outlets face financial challenges due to declining advertising revenue, while the industry seeks new audiences through streaming and video podcasts. Radio confirms its role as the country’s most reliable medium during times of crisis, in a year when press freedom and media financing in Chile were under pressure.
In a presidential election year, public debate around the media focused on the financing and role of public television. TVN, the country’s only state-owned broadcaster, operates largely on a commercial basis, a model that has come under increasing strain as advertising investment has declined. TVN began 2025 in debt, and in May its board declared the company was not viable. Strike threats loomed as the company’s unions agreed to stop broadcasts to demand better working conditions. Management reached an agreement with the unions, but the channel’s financial crisis continues.
TVN’s management and editorial independence also became part of the political debate during the campaign. Candidate José Antonio Kast, who went on to win the election, criticised the channel’s management, culminating in the resignation of TVN’s chairman, who said he stepped down to avoid harming TVN staff. While figures on the political right disputed this explanation, attributing the resignation to the channel’s poor financial performance, those on the left lamented the decision.
Financial challenges are impacting commercial outlets too. CNN Chile entered court-supervised debt restructuring, Copesa (owner of La Tercera) faces lawsuits from suppliers and former employees, and Radio Cooperativa put its building and studios up for sale to cover debts.1 Anatel, the National Television Association, announced it is considering legal action against Google over its alleged dominant position in the advertising business, arguing it harms national media. Meanwhile, Chilevisión changed hands for the second time within four years, with the international company Paramount selling the station to Vytal Group, an Argentinian and Chilean media company.
Amid a challenging economic landscape, news organisations are seeking to reach audiences through strategic changes and new products. Mega, the most-watched channel, moved its evening news an hour earlier to strengthen its prime-time lineup, securing the top ratings for both the newscast and the channel in Chile.
In digital media, two projects are exploring new formats. El Dínamo, known for its news coverage, launched a print magazine featuring columns, interviews, and long-form reports by veteran journalists, along with a subscription plan. Meanwhile, The Clinic, after transitioning from print to fully digital, expanded its content with newsletters and podcasts, blending information and magazine-style features.
News radio stations Bío Bío Chile and Cooperativa have consistently scored highly in public trust since we started measuring in 2017. In 2025, a power outage that affected over 90% of the population and left many without internet access underscored radio’s role as a reliable information provider. AM and FM stations became a key source of updates during the recovery process, and battery-powered radios temporarily replaced mobile phones as the primary news device.2 Canal 13 further illustrates radio’s relevance: originally a TV channel, it now runs a radio conglomerate too. The company is enhancing a second news station, Radio 13C, with a new programming lineup, following the success of T13 Radio.
Journalist groups raised alarms about press freedom after the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested permission to intercept the phones of 11 journalists to identify sources in investigative reports linked to a bribery and influence-peddling scandal known as the ‘Audio Case’.3 The judiciary rejected the request, but journalists saw it as an act of intimidation and a violation of press freedom protections. A similar debate arose around a proposed law seeking to criminalise publishing information from confidential judicial cases. While the bill’s sponsors say it aims to prevent leaks of restricted information, journalist associations fear it could become a tool to persecute reporters. This comes as publishing case-related conversations, particularly via WhatsApp, has become more common in investigative journalism.
YouTube has consolidated its role as a key platform for both traditional and independent outlets, some led by journalists recognised for their television work, such as Daniel Matamala and Mónica Rincón. Live streams and video podcasts share a style reminiscent of radio, with visible microphones and headphones, blending news delivery, analysis, and entertainment in panel formats with recurring contributors and guests. Meanwhile, emerging news influencers summarise and interpret daily events in vertical videos using the visual language of platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Some are journalists, while others are from outside the profession, yet deliver news to their communities.
Francisco J. Fernández
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Enrique Núñez-Mussa
Michigan State University
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Changing media
Print newspapers reached their lowest level of consumption since 2017. Online and television news consumption remains stable, with social media retaining its prominence as a news source.
Pay for online news
10%
(-)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
45%
(-1)
Trust in news overall
34%
(-2)
Global average: 37%
Public trust in news has fluctuated within a relatively narrow range since 2020, hovering at around a third of the population. However, several brands increased their trust scores this year, most notably Meganoticias, the brand with the largest reach on and offline, which rose by 5 percentage points.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
70/180
Score 60.84
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 https://www.biobiochile.cl/especial/bbcl-investiga/noticias/articulos/2025/04/02/copesa-en-estado-critico-35-cobranzas-judiciales-solicitud-de-quiebra-y-cuentas-sin-fondos.shtml; https://www.lacuarta.com/chile/noticia/reconocida-radio-vende-su-historico-edificio-para-saldar-deudas
2 https://www.archi.cl/la-radio-no-solo-resiste-se-fortalece-como-el-medio-mas-confiable/
3 https://radio.uchile.cl/2025/11/06/amenaza-a-la-libertad-de-prensa-colegio-de-periodistas-condena-solicitud-de-fiscal-para-interceptar-telefonos-de-comunicadores/