2011 – IAPA Midyear Meeting – San Diego, Estados Unidos
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Argentina
Midyear Meeting
San Diego, California, USA
April 6 - 9, 2011
8 de mayo de 2013 - 20:00
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The death of former president Néstor Kirchner had a decisive impact on Argentine life, and the federal governments relationship with the media has been no exception. With Kirchner the attacks on freedom of expression took the form of frontal attacks and piercing jabs made recently in all his public appearances, even going to the extreme of popularizing slogans and phrases that put some newspapers at the center of the complaints.
Under current president Cristina Fernández the complaints about news media content have continued being one of the principal official concerns. Identification of the exercise of freedom of expression as an enemy on the part of the government has not lost currency in this new era.
But the major problems continue, such as the aggression suffered mainly by the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín at the hands of a group of some 50 labor union members, including from the companys graphics department, who prevented the distribution of the March 27 Sunday edition. It was one of the most serious intimidating actions that the company has faced. The blockade, also pursued by labor leader Hugo Moyanos truck drivers union, lasted 12 hours and also affected La Nación, to a lesser extent.
The action continued despite representatives of the company early in the day complaining to the courts and police. Police stood by and never intervened. This attitude of encroaching on the newspapers right to circulate freely by coercion and those affected not receiving the slightest defense by the authorities and even their disobeying express legal rulings amounts to a very serious curtailment of freedom of expression.
Such developments are being repeated more intensively since January. At the end of December a court ruling ordered the relevant agencies to ensure freedom of expression. The court ordered, as an interim step, which amounts to recognition that a constitutional guarantee may have been violated, that Minister of Security Nilda Garré should take the steps needed to safeguard the goods in question, on the understanding that the right to demonstrate may not curtail free speech. It asked that all decisions tending to ensure the free circulation of newspapers be taken, which is the basis of the peoples constitutional right to freedom of information.
The court order was ignored by the authorities and the coercive acts went on, with the government failing to act. The blockade of La Nación was lifted at 3:00 a.m. and of Clarín at 12:00 noon.
Even though the reason for the blockade was said to have arisen from a labor dispute in the Artes Gráficas Rioplatenses (AGR) plant where magazines and pamphlets are printed the judge on duty at the time, Nora González Rosselló, in January ordered, as precautionary measure, that the Ministry of Security arbitrate all the media, so that not only the AGRs delegates and the organizations they represent but also any person or group abstain from any conduct that might prevent or obstruct the normal entry and departure of persons or industrial goods of the graphics company Arte Gráfico Editorial Argentino (AGEA).
This was one of the orders that was not complied with during the blockade. An order made by another court on the basis of evidence of a flagrant criminal act on March 27 was that the police should immediately put an end to the unlawful act. Yet another order that was not complied with was one that the demonstrators be identified and filmed and this be immediately reported to the public prosecutors office. The federal judge sitting at the time said that at no time was he consulted, although the Federal Police issued a communiqué in which it claimed that telephone calls had been made to the court but had not been answered. The Minister of Security in turn stated that this was a long-standing labor dispute. She was called on to clarify the events before three congressional committees, but did not turn up.
The newspaper, for its part, denounced a case of extortion and showed a video to the police where one of the demonstrators is seen demanding nine million pesos under threat of blockading the paper. This video also revealed the demonstrators contacts with unions controlled by Hugo Moyano and with government offices. The prosecutors office indicted the demonstrator for extortion and ordered more evidence.
For their part, members of the Senate unanimously repudiated the blockade of Clarín and La Nación.
The IAPA announced that it would send a mission on May 4 to look into the major problems the Argentine press was facing and would seek a meeting with the President. IAPA President Gonzalo Marroquín described the blockades which prevented the free circulation of news media as a serious attack on press freedom. He had earlier condemned the disruption of the newspapers editions and called on the government to take immediate steps to penalize these actions. He also repeated that the government should encourage an attitude of tolerance of the work of the press in order to ensure respect for freedom of expression and avoid endorsing aggressive attitudes.
Numerous bodies expressed their repudiation of the pressure being put on the newspapers. For the Association of Argentine News Entities (ADEPA) obstructing publications amounts to one of the most serious attacks upon press freedom and also a criminal offense under the Penal Code. The obstruction of distribution of the newspapers will go down in history as one of the darkest days regarding freedom of expression, the organization said in a press release.
This campaign to discredit was questioned by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) at its first conference in Latin America that has just been held in Colombia. The Association for Civil Rights denounced what it said was the existence of indirect censorship through the most sophisticated and least visible mechanisms that are hidden behind the normal activities of government agencies.
Neither has it been possible to dispel the climate of tension that journalists who do not coincide with the official view have to undergo, they frequently being subjected to public accusations and attacks launched from the official media and those controlled by the government. The onslaught is directed at news media, journalists and financial consultants. The overbearing persecution was brought to attention by journalist Luis Majul. Others, such as Jorge Lanata, complained that they are unable to work in the country. Morales Solá, a columnist with the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación, reported to have been trailed on the street and suffering wiretapping that he attributed to the Ministry of Intelligence (SIDE).
Despite the fact that for years there had been a policy of failure to get together with the press the President announced in March that the confrontations should be ended urgently. That was positive news and it was only hoped that her words would be turned into action, something that has not yet happened.
In another relevant development the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Hugo Moyano, was investigated by the Swiss judiciary, which called on its Argentine counterpart for documentation concerning the court hearings that he is facing to determine if he had engaged or not in money laundering. After announcing a general strike and putting it on hold he called for a boycott of the media and then it was said in the CGT said the action was directed at the media, against which he filed suit, charging fraud. The Supreme Court intervened to ratify the legitimacy of the Swiss request and that it be reported on the Courts Web site.
There was during this period clear institutional progress when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the contention of the newspaper Perfil in a lawsuit filed against the federal government alleging discrimination in the placement of official advertising.
The case had begun in 2006 at the suggestion made the year before by then IAPA President Alejandro Miró Quesada in light of the clear official discrimination shown towards Perfil. The newspaper reported that Miró Quesada had asked him to take the legal action so as to become the voice of other media that because of
their being smaller were not in a position to do so, given the risk of succumbing to expected government reprisals, wrote Gustavo González, editor-in-chief of the Editorial Perfil publishing company.
The official advertising was becoming a means of rewarding media that supported the government and punishing those opposing it. And now the Court has begun to put a stop to such dangerous manipulation.
With that capricious handling of official advertising a network of privately-owned media and television producers exclusively sustained by official advertising was being built.
In this regard, attention was called to the sale of 50% of a conglomerate of newspapers, radio stations, Web sites and magazines supporting the government to two businessmen new to the media sector.
These movements in the news companies called raised eyebrows, because despite their being privately-owned operations they could be suspected of being built on the basis of an injection of funds deriving from official advertising. It was precisely because of this that the Court gave its historic ruling that requires the government to come up with reasonable criteria on where to invest the official advertising money. The government promised to comply with the Court decision.
The Federal Civil and Commercial Chamber suspended a decision of the Ministry of Communications that last year had ordered the expiration of the license of Internet provider in the wideband market Fibertel, which belongs to the Clarín Group.
Another disproportionate legal action, one ordered by Federal Judge Ramón Claudio Chávez, brought about the shutdown of the Posada, Misiones state, television station Canal 4 due to a dispute among shareholders in which ownership of the shares was at issue. Also suffering legal problems was the radio station LT9, the oldest in Rosario, Sante Fe province, after the agency responsible for application of the Media Law declared the stations broadcast license to have expired and appointed someone to step in. The Association of Privately-Owned Radio Stations (ARPA) expressed concern at the action.
The Chivilcoy, Buenos Aires Province, newspaper La Campaña reported that it had been excluded from placement of official advertising on the argument voiced by the Interior Minister that the municipality did not share its editorial stance.
It was a matter of regret that the chief librarian of the National Library, Horacio González, and a group supporting the government calling itself Carta Abierta (Open Letter), described as insulting the fact that Nobel Literature Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa had been invited to the inauguration of the Book Fair to be held on April 20, arguing that his thinking was against the majority democratic views of the people. It was a positive thing that President Cristina Fernández has called on González to withdraw the criticism which he had sent to the Fundación El Libro.
The Papel Prensa newsprint company owned by the newspapers La Nación and Clarín continued to be subjected to harassment.
Regarding access to public information, since the federal Senate adopted a bill in September the Chamber of Deputies has still not given its approval, despite having promised to do so by the end of last year, even though the Supreme Court had acted swiftly on the issue in the case of the newspaper Diario Río Negro versus Neuquén province.
As for the Law on Audiovisual Services (media law), several of the main clauses continue to be objected to and in suspense by court decision, but the body responsible for application of the new law is still putting into effect the rearrangements envisioned in it.
