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El Ciudadano

Original article: Juristas alertan por uso mediático de investigaciones contra Cariola y Hassler

The Association of Jurists for Democracy (AJD) has expressed its concern regarding the increasing «political-media instrumentalization» of ongoing investigations involving Senator Karol Cariola and former Santiago mayor and current Congresswoman Irací Hassler.

In a statement, the AJD declared that recent media coverage by outlets such as La Tercera and Mega exceeds the boundaries of informative journalism, adopting a narrative structure designed to instill a presumption of guilt in the public’s mind through exaggerated interpretations and speculative accounts of investigations that have yet to undergo legal contradiction.

“The dissemination of headlines that categorically attribute criminal acts based on supposed police reports is particularly serious. It is not legally acceptable for investigative actions, preliminary police reports, or unilateral interpretations of administrative records to be converted into tools for premature media condemnation,” the document stated.

Additionally, they emphasized that reports from the Police Investigations cannot legally attribute criminal actions, as that responsibility lies solely with the courts within the framework of due legal process, fully respecting the right to defense.

In this regard, they noted that “presenting preliminary police information as if it were an official determination of guilt constitutes a serious distortion of procedural reality.”

Moreover, they indicated that there is a particularly grave violation of the presumption of innocence, which is a fundamental principle of the rule of law that prevents public attribution of guilt before a final judicial ruling exists.

“This violation is exacerbated when, despite the defense explicitly asserting that no crime has occurred and that the affected parties are completely innocent, a media narrative of guilt is established based on preliminary, fragmented, and unchallenged information,” they added.

On another note, they pointed out a pattern of selective leaks of information coming from ongoing criminal investigations, which endangers the integrity of the process and turns criminal investigations into instruments of political pressure and public stigmatization.

For the AJD, this pattern aligns with a dynamic widely recognized in legal literature and comparative Latin American experience as lawfare: the strategic use of judicial, investigative, and media tools to weaken, neutralize, or eliminate political leadership through formally legal mechanisms that, in practice, deviate from their constitutional purpose.

According to the association, regional experiences show that processes of democratic erosion rarely begin with sentences; rather, they start with leaks, biased coverage, dissemination of partial data, and the media construction of a permanent suspicion.

Finally, the association concluded: “The AJD expresses its solidarity with Senator Karol Cariola and Congresswoman Irací Hassler, reaffirming that no democracy can tolerate the substitution of due process with media trials or the manipulation of criminal prosecution as a tool for political discipline.”

La entrada Legal Experts Raise Concerns Over Media Manipulation in Investigations Involving Cariola and Hassler se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.