Carlos Fernando Chamorro

Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios (born ) is a Nicaraguan independent investigative journalist. He is the founder and editor of Confidencial, a news website and weekly publication combining investigative journalism and analyses of current affairs. He also hosts two television news shows, Tonight and This Week. Chamorro is the youngest son of former president of Nicaragua Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a Nicaraguan journalist and editor of La Prensa who was shot to death in January 1978 during the Somoza regime (the paper was critical of the regime). During the first Sandinista regime and through 1994, Chamorro was editor in chief of the government newspaper Barricada. Early life and Sandinista work Carlos Fernando Chamorro studied at Colegio Centro America. Then, Chamorro attended college at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1977. He then returned to Nicaragua intended to study for a master's degree and then work to address poverty in the country. He instead decided to join the revolutionary effort to effect change for nation's poor. Covertly, Chamorro attended small-arms training, studied Marxism and joined the propaganda section of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN),. becoming chief of the Agitation and Propaganda Department. His father was assassinated the following year, prompting Chamorro to turn to journalism, becoming a reporter at his father's former paper La Prensa. Following the fall of the Somoza regime, Chamorro's mother briefly joined the Sandinista junta, but became disenchanted in less than a year and, with Chamorro's siblings Pedro Joaquín and Cristiana, returned to La Prensa, which she turned into an opposition paper again, but this time opposing the FSLN. This prompted a number of departures from the paper, including Chamorro who became editor in chief of Barricada, the FSLN's newspaper, which had taken over the physical plant of the Somozas regime's paper, Novedades. (Meanwhile his uncle Xavier Chamorro sold his shares of La Prensa to found El Nuevo Diario, which was sympathetic to the FSLN, and Chamorro's sister Claudia joined the FSLN government as ambassador to Costa Rica, while Chamorro's brother Pedro Joaquín left Nicaragua to join the Contras.)