Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

El Faro (Opinion)

Central American center-left / pro-press freedom

Owned byNon-profit Fundación Periódica; co-owned by founder Carlos Dada, co-founder Jorge Simán, and several journalist-shareholders including Óscar Martínez, Carlos Martínez, Sergio Arauz, Daniel Valencia, Ricardo Vaquerano, and Élmer Menjívar
FundingPrimarily international journalism foundation grants (roughly 75%), with smaller portions from advertising, reader donations, events, and royalties for books, films, and syndication
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

El Faro was founded in San Salvador in April 1998 by journalist Carlos Dada and businessman Jorge Simán, making it Latin America's first digital-native news outlet. For more than two decades it specialized in deep investigative work on corruption, gang politics, human rights abuses, and state power across Central America, earning an international reputation and awards including the María Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University. Ownership gradually expanded to include several senior journalists. By 2021, roughly 75 percent of its budget came from international foundation grants, a dependence that grew as the political environment in El Salvador became more hostile. That same year, a Pegasus Project investigation revealed that nearly two dozen El Faro journalists had been surveilled with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, with evidence pointing to the Bukele government. The government also froze some of the outlet's assets and opened money-laundering and tax-evasion investigations against it — actions that international press-freedom organizations widely condemned as political persecution. In April 2023, El Faro relocated its administrative and legal operations to San José, Costa Rica, registering as the non-profit Fundación Periódica, while keeping its core reporting team inside El Salvador. Its opinion section has consistently challenged authoritarian governance and has been critical of the Trump-Bukele partnership and U.S. deportation policies that affect Central American migrants.

Sources

  1. El Faro (digital newspaper) — Wikipedia
  2. El Faro Moves to Costa Rica — El Faro
  3. El Faro moves from El Salvador to Costa Rica due to Bukele's persecution — LatAm Journalism Review
  4. In El Salvador, a beacon of truth under threat — Columbia Journalism Review
  5. A Beacon in Central America — El Faro (About)
  6. Carlos Dada, editor of El Faro — Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
  7. 'Trying to Silence Us': El Faro Says Bukele Government Has Frozen Some Assets — PBS Frontline
  8. El Salvador's News Site El Faro Relocates to Costa Rica — Democracy Now!

Profile compiled 2026-09-09; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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