Miami (April 29, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern at what it called “an ongoing and systematic campaign to discredit” Argentine news media and individual journalists and its fear that the series of anonymous, public insults could be a bid by the government to curtail freedom of expression.
In recent days representatives of the federal government renewed a charge that opposition news media and journalists were “anti-democratic.” In addition to outbursts at government public meetings, slogans painted on walls in Buenos Aires maligned prominent journalists from the daily newspaper Clarín; at the same time the group Mothers of Mayo Square called for a public “ethics trial” of a number of journalists it accuses of remaining silent during Argentina’s military dictatorships.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre said, “We continue to be concerned at the attacks by the Argentine government on news media, attacks that have multiplied in number since the controversial enactment of the Law on Audiovisual Services.”
Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, added that while public acts are a part of free speech “what worries us is that they appear to be part of a systematic campaign to discredit –something that we have been monitoring and denouncing for some time now in our reports on the state of press freedom.”
Referring to the general concern in Argentina surrounding the conflict between the press and government -- expressed in Congress, in civil society and among opinion-makers -- Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, declared that the IAPA is certain that these campaigns “will not destroy the diverse and plural press that has always been above governments and committed to democracy.”
The IAPA officers recalled that in the organization’s latest report on the state of freedom of the press, adopted at its Midyear Meeting in Aruba last month, it was declared that “while newspapers find in the institutional deterioration an inexhaustible source of material for its reports and opinions, the government insists that some corporate conspiracy exists with the intent to destabilize it, works under the assumption that everything that it does is good, and contends that if it receives any sort of objection it is because of some hidden interest.”
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org
