Argentina I

WHEREAS the Argentine government continues to exacerbate its model of arbitrary distribution of official advertising, ignoring legal rulings by the Supreme Court that require it to respect objective and reasonable guidelines that do not affect freedom of expression WHEREAS there continues to be an increase in public funds assigned to this end, reaching a level never before seen in the market, and its use as a tool of indirect censorship through a system of rewards and punishments WHEREAS at the same time for more than eight months there remains in force in Argentina an unheard of and very serious private advertising restriction, imposed by government officials on various companies for them not to place advertisements in independent media, with the objective of depriving these of their natural, legitimate and vital means of subsistence WHEREAS this real boycott was initiated simultaneously by companies of various kinds and implies a year-to-year decrease of 70% to 80% of advertisements, producing enormous damage to the sustainability of the news companies, which face the risk of losing their ability to operate WHEREAS in addition to amounting to a case of censorship and affecting freedom of expression said boycott violates laws on the defense of competition and of the consumer, going against fundamental guarantees of the people, such as the right to information, transparency in regard to consumption, competition and protection as consumers WHEREAS these attitudes openly and directly violate the Pact of San José, Costa Rica and the Declaration of Chapultepec     THE IAPA GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLVES to urge the Argentine government to cease its discriminatory practices concerning the placement of official advertising, respecting objective and equitable criteria and not using public resources as a system of reward and punishment to reiterate to the Argentine Congress the need to pass a law that, in accordance with international standards, regulates the placement of official advertising to emphatically condemn the private advertising restriction in effect for more than eight months in Argentina, derived from the pressures of the government on private advertisers for them to abstain from advertising in independent media to repudiate the attitude of global, regional or Argentine companies that accepted to be submitted to those inadmissible pressures, stopping placing advertisements in various Argentine media and compromising the sustainability of these to call upon the private sector to be consistent with the principles of freedom of expression and free competition, resisting being participants at odds with them.