Although there were certain prior precedents, this operation began to take concrete form with the appearance of a note in the publication Novo O'Día (Curitiba, Brazil) on June 25, 1975, which reported the murder of 59 MIR militants in clashes with Argentine government forces in the town of Salta.

According to the information gathered by Brazilian researcher Maria Helena Wiechmann, with the collaboration of Josefina Palazzo Ayres of the Documentation Division of the State of Paraná, and cited by journalist Ernesto Carmona, the archives of the Public Library of Curitiba show that the old newspaper O Día released three editions in 1975, modifying its name by placing the adjective "Novo" before its old logo.

Novo O'Día appeared on April 15, May 31, and June 25 of that year. The newspaper, which was directed by Almir H. De Lara, was founded on July 2, 1870, and relaunched in 1896, 1901, 1923, and 1975, the year it printed its three editions at Cromográfica Editora Limitada, Rua Augusto Stelfels 793, commissioned by Imperium Sociedade Jornalistica e Publicitaria Ltda.

The financing for this action in Brazil, as established in several trials, came from the then-state-owned Línea Aérea Nacional (LAN) and the Chilean embassy in Brazil, noting the responsibility of DINA agent Gerardo Roa Araneda, who was a LAN official at the time.

In its June 25 edition, the newspaper Novo O'Día, in Curitiba, Brazil, reported the death of 59 Chilean “Marxist extremists” killed in Salta, Argentina, and included their full names. Under the headline "Chilean terrorists in the interior of Argentina," it reported that terrorist actions in Argentina had been increasing in recent days, with clashes having been recorded with security forces in Salta, Tucumán, Mendoza, Córdoba, and Rosario.

The report concludes by noting that in those encounters with Argentine security forces, the members of the MIR had been identified among the dead, and provided a list of 59 full names, ordered alphabetically by surname.

Various publications and reports on the subject point out that the person responsible for managing the appearance of this information in that newspaper was the press attaché of the Chilean Embassy in Brazil, Jaime Valdés, who acted as coordinator of DINA activities in this matter.

Source: ciper.cl, March 21, 2006

Ethical sanction against journalists who failed to tell the truth had international repercussions

Journalistic organizations and media outlets in Latin America and Europe disseminated and commented positively on the ruling of the Ethics and Discipline Tribunal of the Metropolitan Council of the Journalists' Association, which sanctioned three members of the order for participating in the production of fake news in the setup known as Operation Colombo or the Case of the 119, orchestrated by the military dictatorship's intelligence services in June 1975.

The coverage abroad contrasts with the silence of the local press, particularly the media outlets affected by the ruling (La Tercera, La Segunda, El Mercurio, and Las Ultimas Noticias). In other cases, the ruling was misrepresented in letters and comments that circulated on the Internet.

In Chile, the news was covered by Diario Siete, La Nación, Revista Punto Final, Radio Cooperativa, Radio Universidad de Chile, the electronic newspapers El Mostrador and Gran Valparaíso, and numerous alternative outlets to the large corporate media.

Operation Colombo, a "psychological warfare" operation, presented 119 forcibly disappeared persons as having been killed by their own comrades—"exterminated like rats"—in fictitious armed encounters in Argentina, according to news stories invented by the press in June 1975.

The 119 victims were part of hundreds of people claimed in "habeas corpus" petitions by their families that were ignored by the courts, and among them were two young disappeared journalists, Mario Calderón Tapia, from Valparaíso, and Luis Durán Rivas, from Santiago.

Ethical process The ethical ruling, issued in March 2006, responded to a complaint filed in November 2005 by the victims' families. The 38-page document can be found on several websites. The 250 pages of the complete file, with its annexes, statements from the accused and witnesses, related documents, and photographs, are published on the London-based portal of Chilean journalist Róbinson Rojas, who resides in England.

The investigator of the summary proceeding was journalist Alfredo Taborga Molina, author of a file of some 250 pages, whose content of statements and testimonies constitutes a valuable X-ray of Chilean journalism of the era.

The sanction was approved unanimously by the members of the Ethics and Discipline Tribunal of the Metropolitan Regional Council (Santiago) of the Association: Doris Jiménez Villarroel, Enrique Contreras González, Víctor Abudaye Soto, and Ricardo Urzúa Munita.

Sanctions and admonitions The ruling sanctioned three journalists for their ethical responsibility in the news setup that, in June 1975, presented the disappearance of 119 citizens in the press as if they had "exterminated" each other.

For the journalists' deontological tribunal, "those responsible for handling the information did not fulfill their professional obligation and their commitment to society to work with the truth, thereby failing in their essential ethical duty." Fernando Díaz Palma, who at the time directed the newspaper "Las Ultimas Noticias," of the El Mercurio chain, was sanctioned with "public censure and suspension of his status as a member of the Journalists' Association for six months" for violating the Code of Ethics.

The same sanction was applied to Alberto Guerrero Espinoza, who served at that time as director of the newspaper La Tercera de la Hora. Beatriz Undurraga Gómez, of El Mercurio, who ignored the Tribunal's summons, received "public censure" and a three-month suspension, while Mercedes Garrido Garrido, of the evening paper "La Segunda" (also of "El Mercurio"), was acquitted for lack of evidence, as she appeared to testify and demonstrated that she had not been involved.

René Silva Espejo and Mario Carneyro, directors of "El Mercurio" and "La Segunda" during the publication of the fake news, were declared "not indictable" as they had passed away. The tribunal also admonished two renowned journalists who were not involved in "Operation Colombo" but refused to cooperate with the order's ethical investigation and did not appear to testify before the prosecutor.

The tribunal summoned about twenty journalists affiliated with the Association, of diverse political and ideological backgrounds, not as defendants but as witnesses or simply to gather their input. The two admonished journalists, who also did not appeal the tribunal's decision, were Mónica González, director of Diario Siete, awarded the Dan David Prize ($250,000) in May 2006 by Tel Aviv University, Israel, and Juan Pablo Cárdenas Squella, 2005 National Journalism Prize winner, regional councilor of the Institute for Press and Society (Ipys) of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), and director of Radio Universidad de Chile. The tribunal ruled that they violated Article 13 of the Regulations for Summary Proceedings for the Ethics and Discipline Tribunals of the Association, which states that "no registered journalist may refuse to provide a statement in a summary proceeding or to attend hearings to which they are summoned for that purpose, unless there is a legitimate cause for excuse." The admonition of González and Cárdenas was a minor aspect of the ruling, but it was more publicized, commented on, and criticized than the sanction of the three journalists involved in the 1975 press publications, probably due to ignorance or a mistaken reading of the document. The ruling also implies a self-criticism by the Association itself. "In light of this investigation, it is also evident that the Journalists' Association of Chile did not fulfill its duty to protect correct professional performance and to be a benchmark in the defense of ethical values in the exercise of journalism that is healthy for society," indicates a resolving paragraph of the ruling (page 23). "It lacked the resolve to defend society's requirements to be correctly informed and to denounce the responsibility held by the press and the journalists who were complicit in this situation." The flip side of the plot Two accused journalists—Díaz Palma and Guerrero Espinoza—explicitly accepted the authority of the Association to judge ethical conduct in the profession. Both justified their equivocal professional performance due to corporate demands and possible government economic reprisals through the military dictatorship's advertising spending. Likewise, they acknowledged a lack of professional rigor. For example, Fernando Díaz Palma stated: -"... Today, with the perspective of time, 30 years later, if..., of course, I tell you, this was a fraud... a deception. ...A deception, and the trust in journalists who try to report on everything was trampled upon... But, I think that if it is official information that is handed to you, just like today, one does not question official information. It happens in all regimes. It was complicated... But now, 30 years later, of course, one realizes..., 30 years later we have come to hear many things about what was happening. Dead, disappeared, digging up people... of course... if we had BEEN ABLE and had KNOWN those things, we would have had to investigate them before, without prejudice to taking risks... because there..." -Prosecutor: In other words, that (the investigation, the reporting) was missing...? -Fernando Díaz: "Of course, it was missing... It was missing to have covered things... and to have done our own investigations... But, look, it's like that... And one... let's see..." Guerrero Espinoza, in a letter to prosecutor Taborga dated December 1, 2005 (Annex 15), said: "It would be valuable if the current Association could somehow reconstruct that stage of journalism with intimidation, scarce news sources, prior censorship, curfew, and the daily presence of military patrols in the newsrooms of the newspapers, taking advantage of the fact that many of its protagonists are still alive and with some mental clarity. They, exclusively from a professional point of view—without contaminating it with the political aspect—could make a good contribution to the new generations of journalists." In his statement before the prosecutor, the former director of La Tercera, Guerrero Espinoza, recalled: "Do not forget that there was prior censorship, intimidation, military patrols... We at La Tercera had a military patrol for more than a year that arrived every day at 6 in the evening to control the information. I believe the Association has not considered many things. If you review the history of journalism, and you review the newspapers of the year '73, you will find that La Tercera published blank pages and blank paragraphs for many days, and that was a signal I intended to give so that they would realize there was censorship. No one has said that over time. So, I think it is necessary to consider the conditions in which one lived, the conditions in which one worked, and how difficult it was to confront news sources. There were none... They were on only one side. So, how could a newspaper director confirm every piece of news that arrived?" Guerrero clarified that the will of the company always prevailed: "Ah, well... What I want to say is that I was not the absolute authority of the newspaper... I was the director, but there was a General Council, which was chaired by Mr. Germán Pico Cañas, one of the owners of the newspaper, and which included various people whom the Government authorities also called. They would call them on the phone and tell them, 'Look, there is very important information that we need you to highlight.' There, many times, the confrontation occurred between the owner of the newspaper and the journalist, not to give it the importance they had asked for and the eight-column headline on the front page. Well, there one had to act, establish the balance, manage the information, reduce it a lot, because undoubtedly—as you say—there were guidelines, and the reporters who covered the government sectors naturally brought the influence of the information they had been given." Guerrero ended up being fired from the newspaper for publishing the news of the kidnapping and rescue of the son of a prominent businessman of the time, a fact that the dictatorship wanted to keep hidden: "The next day I published it in the newspaper. 'Rescued son of Manuel Cruzat.' No one had spoken of the kidnapping. And I say that he had been kidnapped, that a million had been paid... That, that news..., because there was the commitment to the Government, and the commitment of the Company (of the owner of La Tercera) to the Government not to publish it, cost me the directorship of the newspaper. To me, the day after the publication, I was asked for my resignation..." The journalist stated that today he could act differently: "I tell you then, I, naturally, maybe I would have preferred to have more of a hero's soul and have risked it... but in the environment we lived in... I don't know... [illegible]... one has a family, one takes care of their job... With the perspective of time, maybe now I would say that I don't care about risking it and whatever happens, happens." None of the accused appealed the ruling of the ethics tribunal of the first instance, accepting the sanction of their peers. The oversight of professional associations over the ethical conduct of their associates was restored in the Chilean legal system by a reform of the Political Constitution approved by Congress in 2005, although legislation is still needed regarding the special tribunals that will hear deontological accusations against professionals not associated with those organizations. Affiliation with the associations has not been mandatory for any profession since the "legal" reforms implemented by the military dictatorship. The ruling also left "on record the pernicious performance of the then-civil official of the military government Álvaro Puga in the manipulation, intimidation, censorship, and persecution of journalists and media." According to the tribunal, because he is an "individual who is not a journalist and therefore is not a member of the Journalists' Association of Chile," the lawyer Puga "is not a subject of this summary proceeding," although he practiced "opinion" journalism and signed press articles under the pseudonym "Alexis." The information gathered by the tribunal established that under the dictatorship, a sort of psychological warfare division operated, linked to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), later called the National Information Center (CNI), whose work consisted of guiding and controlling the media. In that instance, Puga worked with psychologist Hernán Tuane Scaff, also involved in DINA/CNI torture in numerous judicial proceedings, and Anthal Lipthay, of Hungarian origin, who arrived in Chile from the CIA with a "stateless" passport as a "psychological specialist." Later, he became a financial operator for Augusto Pinochet and became a millionaire. According to the social pages of La Tercera, Lipthay hosted Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, the sixty-something daughter of the former dictator, at his Miami residence. Key pieces in the development of the fake news that gave rise to the intrigue of Operation Colombo were the press attachés in Argentina and Brazil, Silvia Pinto and Jaime Valdés, both deceased journalists. DINA agent Gerardo Roa Araneda, in his dual capacity as an official of the Línea Aérea Nacional (LAN), obtained the financing to release three editions of the Brazilian newspaper Novo O Dia, of Curitiba, where he published articles signed with his real name. This publication, plus the magazine LEA, which appeared only once in Buenos Aires, published the fake news about "The 119" and immediately disappeared, but their "reports" were amplified by El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, La Segunda, La Mañana de Talca, other print media, the international news agencies Associated Press and Latin, plus the radio and television of the time. International repercussions Levy Benshimol, President of the National Association of Journalists of Venezuela—an organization critical of his country's government—expressed (April 20): "What an extraordinary example of that Ethics Tribunal, for all of us!" He added: "In my name and that of the other members of the National Association of Journalists, our sincere and solidary support for the decision of the Ethics Tribunal of the Journalists' Association of Chile for such extraordinary work, which not only sanctions, but opens the true path of the exercise of journalism based not only on professional ethics, but on civic ethics, for they not only failed in their commitment as human beings. Please convey this message to our colleagues." Columnist Orlando Pérez, of the newspaper Hoy, in Quito, Ecuador, noted (April 16) that "the news marks a milestone in the history of Latin American journalism: 'The Ethics and Discipline Tribunal of the Metropolitan Council of the Journalists' Association of Santiago de Chile confirmed the ruling of the prosecutor and president of that body, Alfredo Taborga, and condemned former directors of El Mercurio, La Segunda, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Tercera and a journalist, for lack of ethics and failure to comply with the duty 'to deliver the truth to the citizenry,' in the publications that those media outlets made in the first years of the dictatorship regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of 119 political prisoners in the setup known as Operation Colombo.'" La Política On Line Medios (April 24), from Argentina, commenting on the news published by Clarín of Buenos Aires, in a note titled 'Sanction to editors for misinforming (They operated under the Pinochet regime)', expressed: "The decision opens an unsettling but necessary debate for the strengthening of democracy, regarding the responsibility that falls on the media for their support of dictatorial regimes like those that devastated Chile and Argentina. Responsibility and eventual sanctions that historically are not usually addressed, as also happens with the economic sectors and other institutions that support or tolerate or take advantage of dictatorships." La Política On Line Medios added: "The transcendent Chilean decision also opens a debate on the need for self-regulation of journalistic practice through a plural, independent, and professional body. As is known, in Argentina there is nothing similar to the Journalists' Association that oversees, with the necessary guarantees of due process, the performance of the media." The publication reproduced in full the report by Jorge Escalante, in La Nación of Chile (March 31). The 565th edition of 'La primera piedra (A look at journalism and the media free of guilt)' wrote (April 12): 'Stones at lying journalists: This is the reproduction of a note that appeared in the Chilean newspaper La Nación regarding the participation of some journalists in the dictatorship. In the large number of acts and self-criticisms that we had in Argentina on the occasion of the 30 years of the dictatorship, there is a sector that did not make its own criticism; on the contrary, it continued as if nothing had happened. What would happen if we prosecuted the lack of ethics of the large media during the dictatorship? Look at one of the covers exposed as evidence, isn't it too similar to some Argentine ones?'. And then it reproduced the note by Jorge Escalante, illustrated with the cover of La Segunda whose headline reads "Exterminated like rats." The press summary of the Vice Presidency of the Republic of Venezuela also included the news (March 31): "Chile: Sanction to journalists for ethical breaches. Ethics and Discipline Tribunal of the Metropolitan Council of the Journalists' Association confirmed the ruling of the prosecutor and president of that body, Alfredo Taborga, and condemned former directors of 'El Mercurio', 'La Segunda', 'Las Ultimas Noticias', and 'La Tercera' and a journalist, for lack of ethics and failure to comply with the duty 'to deliver the truth to the citizenry,' in the publications that those media outlets made in the first years of the dictatorship regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of 119 political prisoners in the setup known as Operation Colombo. (La Nación, Chile)."

Source: estudiantescft, June 26, 2014