Argentina

The country's serious economic and political situation has had harsh repercussions. Since last December, when growing unrest caused the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa and street demonstrations began, journalists have been attacked, threatened and intimidated. The Photographers' Association of Argentina reported that "since the beginning of the demonstrations with pots and pans, journalists, and especially cameramen and photographers, have regularly been the victims of police brutality." The association listed the cases of reporters and photographers who were injured during police actions in recent months. Among these cases, it named: Gustavo Fidanza and Hernán España (Diario Popular), Marcelo Baiardi, Dieto Levy, Sergio Goya and Pablo Cerolini (Clarín), Marcos Adandia (Noticias Argentinas), Javier Moreno (Fotobaires), Fabián Marelli and Carlos Barri (La Nación), Alejandra Brattin and Luciano Thieberger (Crónica) and freelance journalists Walter Astrada, Enrique Medina, Leonardo Zavattaro, Verónica Mastrosimone and Daniel Bobadilla. Osvaldo Logares, of cable channel TN, was attacked by demonstrators during a rally in front of the Buenos Aires courts. A fire bomb attack completely destroyed the car of José Stellato, of Radiodifusora Tandil. On January 11, Claudio Andrés De Luca, of "FM Aire Libre," Radio Comunitaria of Rosario, was attacked by a group of demonstrators as he was covering a rally called by the municipal workers' union. In Capitán Bermúdez, north of Rosario, on the same day, Ricardo Martín Oeschger, of FM Paraná, reported that a vehicle followed him as he was leaving the station in his car and shots were fired from it. Journalist Julio Rodríguez, correspondent for the newspaper Clarín in Santiago del Estero province, reported that death threats were made against his family. Rodríguez suggested that they were threatened because of his investigative reporting about possible corruption in the province. At the end of November, 2001, journalists Verónica Cesari of the newspaper Los Andes of Mendoza, was threatened in her home, as was her family, and was attacked and followed in an intimidating way. The threats began after the publication in the newspaper's political section of an investigation by Cesari and others about alleged irregularities in the work of Roberto Lucas, former president of the municipal council of General Las Herras. On November 5, three journalists of the newspaper La Opinión of Trenque Lauquen were attacked while working in Rivadavia district. The managing editor of La Opinión, Eduardo A. Falcón, journalist Dardo Lambertt and photographer Hugo Tiseira were covering a group of residents of Rivadavia who were breaking the lock of a canal that regulates the flow of water to Vidania, in Trenque Lauquen district. The area has been flooded for a long time. The report says about 50 people attacked the journalists and robbed a digital camera and other possessions. Ana Paula Far Pulharre, photographer of the magazine Noticias, was attacked by unknown persons during the inauguration of Carlos Saúl Menem as president of the Justicialist Party. The report by the first minority group, comprising the president of the committee, Elisa Carrió and three other deputies, and that of Radical deputies Horacio Pernasetti and Margarita Stolbizer (which accounts for a majority of the committee) agreed in pointing out serious irregularities that were found in the media, according to official documents. The reports principally referred to the unknown origin of funds used to acquire media companies making possible the formation of large conglomerates. On the other hand, the committee emphasized the use of triangulation to transfer "laundered" money abroad in order to bring it back later in the form of loans that were used in these acquisitions. Among their conclusions, the legislators said the process of concentration of media into a small number of economic groups "shows successive transfer of titles of stocks from one company to another, from that one to a third and so on successively, mergers by takeovers, and companies that went out of business without making any arrangements to pay their debts, and without the managers finishing the required documentation to complete one transfer before beginning the next."