- "El Mercurio lies"
- Foreign help is on its way
- The 119
- A crime of passion
- "A guiding light for society"
- Libel & slander
- Epilogue.
Owned and operated since 1849 by the Edwards family, El Mercurio is the oldest newspaper in Chile, and the Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in Spanish currently in circulation. Chile's "newspaper of record" is the largest news organization in the country, controlled since 1956 by Agustín Edwards Eastman. In 2006/2007, six journalism graduates of the Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen de la Universidad de Chile were called together by filmmaker Ignacio Agüero, producer and journalist Fernando Villagrán and the heads of the ICEI to carry out a study on a specific issue: how El Mercurio reported on the human rights violations committed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Together, they dig into the particulars of several key events and their coverage in El Mercurio, relations between the owners and managers of the newspaper and Chilean political parties, the church, military, secret police, and the CIA. The film raises profound questions not only about the role and responsibilities of Chile's most important newspaper, but of all those who control or manage the dissemination of information and the reporting of news in every country.
