This morning, the journalist Paulina de Allende was the protagonist of a controversy after, in the middle of a live dispatch from the Fourth Police Station, she referred to police officer Daniel Palma as “paco”. This slip caused the television signal to fire the communicator this afternoon.
In a statement published on the media’s social networks, it is detailed that “it has been decided to do without the services of the journalist Paulina de Allende-Salazar.” The same letter from the conglomerate maintains that “today’s action (…) which has been public knowledge, openly transgresses the editorial line and the programmatic orientations of our communication medium.”
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Shortly after Allende-Salazar expressed himself in this way, which he corrected as soon as he took the term, a press point was held at the police station, where the person in charge of delivering a report on the case, Carabineros General Álex Chaván, refused to deliver information if the journalist was on site.
“If the journalist Paulina de Allende is present here, who was capable of treating one of our martyrs as paco, that journalist cannot be here; we are not going to give any statement while that journalist is here. Then I will come back and we will give statements,” the police official said.
Before that, the medium to which the journalist belonged issued a public apology for the statements broadcast on the live signal. Allende-Salazar also referred to her statements, paying her respects to the institution after the death of the police officer.
“I was wrong because I was coming fast, I corrected the shot and my heart is with that woman who lost her husband, my heart is with ordering things in this country, my heart is with the Carabineros de Chile,” said the communicator.
The event also caused a wave of complaints at the National Television Council (CNTV): the agency received more than 2,000 complaints from viewers within hours of the broadcast, a figure that exceeded those received in March, which closed at 463.
