Javier Milei has restricted access to public information, in a new move in the war he is waging against journalism. In his first nine months as president of Argentina, the far-right leader has refused to hold press conferences and has accused journalists of lying about his government and using information for extortion purposes. Now, through a presidential decree, he is preventing them from accessing data that he considers to be private. The cost of building kennels for Milei’s dogs at the presidential estate in Olivos is thus kept under lock and key, as is all information that the government deems not to be of public interest.
The presidential decree published on Monday expands the discretionary exceptions that allow the State to deny information requested by citizens. It also establishes that “information containing data of a private nature that was generated, obtained, transformed, controlled or kept by private individuals or legal entities or due to the absence of a public interest involved shall not be considered public information.”
Argentine civil society denounces that the measure represents a regression in terms of transparency and access to information. More than 60 organizations warned in a statement on Tuesday that by granting public officials the ability to define what information is considered to be of public interest and what remains in the private sphere, it protects them from public scrutiny, weakening international standards of human rights and the fight against corruption. The Association of Argentine journalistic entities (Adepa) anticipated that the new regulation may be unconstitutional and affirmed that the extension of secrecy “beyond what is exceptionally necessary precipitates a slope that makes it impossible to enforce the public responsibility of the authorities.”
Had that regulation been in force during the mandate of Peronist Alberto Fernández, the birthday that the then first lady, Fabiola Yañez, celebrated in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic would have remained a secret. The list of visitors to the presidential residence, obtained through journalistic queries for access to information, was the first clue to what became one of the great scandals of the Fernández government.
“Liars” and “extortionists”
The restriction imposed by a president who defines himself as a “libertarian liberal” is in line with his previous attacks on the media. Since taking office, he has repeatedly accused the press of lying about his government and of using information for extortion purposes. He has called journalists “liars,” “corrupt,” “henchmen” and “extortionists” and has even named those who criticize him: the list of public enemies is long and already numbers in the dozens.
For Milei, journalists are part of “the caste” that he promised to fight with the approval of his electorate. “What I am interested in showing from all this is that it is clear to the trash of traditional politics and to journalists the contempt that people have for them,” the Argentine president stressed in his last television interview, broadcast on Sunday. According to Milei, freedom of the press only survives on social networks, his favorite communication channel.
In the same interview, when asked about the possibility of holding a press conference, Milei proposed that journalists who question him “present a sworn statement, so that they can be subjected to the public ridicule to which journalists subject the rest of society.” This condition for accessing government conferences would clash with the constitutional right to freedom of the press. The same problem is posed by the requirement of a license to practice the profession, a requirement that the government wanted to reinstate but abandoned almost immediately. The intention to create an “elite press room” at the headquarters of the Argentine Government, with access limited to reporters “of stature, with experience and from highly recognized media” also remained in the air, but all these frustrated attempts show the government’s will to put limits on the media.
Milei’s refusal to appear before journalists – a task he delegates to his spokesman, Manuel Adorni – makes him similar to Peronist Cristina Kirchner, who also harshly attacked critical journalism during her two presidential terms (2007-2015). Unlike her, however, Milei has opted to defund and cut back on public media. As soon as he came to power, he announced the cessation of official advertising for at least a year. Shortly afterwards, he dismantled the public news agency Télam, the largest in Latin America and equivalent in Spain to the EFE Agency, and drastically reduced funding for public radio and television, which he hopes to privatize when he obtains authorization from Congress.
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