Diario El Salvador was launched in October 2020 as a state-run daily newspaper.
Media assets
Publishing: Diaro El Salvador
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
Run and owned by the publishing house El Diario Nacional (EDN), Diario El Salvador is close to the President’s Press Office. The government does not seem to hide its connection with the newspaper. On 7 October 2020, President Nayib Bukele announced on his Twitter account that Diario El Salvador was born, describing it as a state-owned company.
According to the latest data, Diario El Salvador has a circulation of 10,000 copies and employs 70 people.
Source of funding and budget
Diario El Salvador finances itself through sales of copies and state funds (both subsidies and advertising). The price per copy is $0.25. Although presented as a state-owned enterprise, Diario El Salvador is not easily auditable because its ownership is hidden behind a group of “subsidiaries” (government-owned companies operating in the energy sector), which is a strategy to avoid public audits, according to an investigation carried out by Factum Magazine.
Based on data from the magazine (i.e., number of state ads), the newspaper is majority-funded by the government. A journalistic investigation found that Diaro El Salvador received a total of US$ 1.98m in contracts with 98 government institutions between 2020 and 2023. The main services provided by the outlet for this cash were ads and subscriptions. In the same period, the publication received over US$ 5.4m in loans acquired from state-owned companies.
Editorial independence
The editorial coverage in Diario El Salvador favors President Bukele’s government. The website defines itself as follows: “Diario El Salvador emerges as a serious, complex and novel information offer where we will give voice to those who have been excluded from the narrative of the rest of the media (…) the newspaper will not live off the street sales, which are entirely intended for vendors and distributors.”
An ad hoc content analysis run for this project in April 2023 and then in May 2024, based on articles published on the newspaper’s website, found an editorial line characterized by excessive praise of President Bukele and constant challenging of his opponents. Not a single snippet of content on the newspaper’s website is critical of the government or Bukele.
Another research project run by Factum whose findings were published on 4 March 2022, showed that the newspaper is a propaganda channel for the president. The research from Factum analyzed almost 3,000 pieces of content published by Diario El Salvador between October 2020 and November 2021.
The publication is described as having a very close relationship with Nuevas Ideas, the political party of President Bukele.
No domestic statute that establishes the editorial independence of Diario El Salvador has been identified.
The El Salvador Journalists Association (APES) has a code of ethics that is supposed to apply to all the media in the country. However, Diario El Salvador has no independent mechanism of assessment or oversight used to validate the editorial independence of its media outlets.
July 2024