La Prensa

For other similarly named newspapers, see La Prensa (disambiguation).

La Prensa is a Nicaraguan newspaper, with offices in the capital Managua. Its current circulation is placed at 42,000.

Contents

1 History
2 Current Positions
3 References
4 External links

History

La Prensa is owned by the Chamorro Family, a prominent Nicaraguan family with long-time ties to the Conservative party. La Prensa was a vocal opponent of the government during the reign of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, often facing censorship from the government. In 1978, its editor Pedro Chamorro was assassinated. Chamorro became a martyer, and his death helped ignite widespread opposition to the Somoza government. Many of the middle and upper class supported the Sandanista insergency after his murder.

After the fall of the government, Chamorro's widow, Violeta served on the five member ruling junta. However, Chamorro and the middle class supporters of the revolution had a different vision for the country than the Sandanistas. When it became apperent that these differences could not be resolved, Violeta Chamorro resigned from the junta in 1980 and begin to oppose the Sandanistas. La Prensa strident criticism of Sandinista policies, particularly its socialist economic policies, and its attacks on FSLN leader Daniel Ortega led the Sandinistas to adopt various restrictions on press freedom. La Presna editors were harrased by state security, and the paper was frequently censored or closed. The restrictions were lifted in a a deal between Ortega and his oppenents in the run-up to the 1990 election.

Some members of the Chamorro family were unhappy with the conservative stances of the newspaper and broke away to form El Nuevo Diario, a left leaning but anti-Ortega paper.

La Prensa recived funds from the US governement during the 1984 and 1990 elections, leadning some left-wing authors accuse the paper of serving as a mouthpiece of the United States govenrment ^[#endnote_.] Given that La Prensa has often take positions against the perfered line of the USG, most commentators regard these claims as exaggerated. ^[#endnote_]

Current Positions

La Prensa generally supports free market, neo-liberal economics and is largely pro-US. It is generally conservative on social issues, and identifies closely with the Catholic church (its cancellation of a weekly column written by Church thologians sparked a minor controversy) However, the paper has savaged ex-President and PLC Leader Arnoldo Aleman for corruption, opposed the Pacto between Aleman and Daniel Ortega, and challenged the precived weak government of current Conservative President Enrique Bolanos.. It has also challenged the outspoken comments of the current American ambassador on Nicaraguan affairs.

References

Berman, C, Under the Big Stick (Boston:?, 1986)

Dodd, L and L Anderson, Learning Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)

Rockwell, R and N Janus Media Power in Central America (Chicago: University of Illanois Press, 2003)

External links

http://www.laprensa.com.ni

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