Javier Milei has left Télam, Argentina's state news agency, in limbo. The president announced on Friday that he would close it because he considered it a means of opposition propaganda and the threat began to take shape in the early hours of Monday. Police barricaded the front door of the agency's two buildings around the same time workers received an email exempting them from work for a week. The website also stopped working. “Page under reconstruction”can be read since then on the digital cover, replacing the news that appeared there.
With 755 employees, Télam is the largest state news agency in Latin America and the second largest in Spanish, after the Spanish Efe. It has a daily production of nearly 500 cables and 200 photographs, in addition to video, radio and social media content.
Many of its workers, still bewildered by the immediate future, participated this Monday in a symbolic hug at the doors of the media's main headquarters. “We defend Télam” and “Télam does not close” was written on the banners raised by journalists, photographers and union members who came to express their support. “The national government is carrying out one of the worst attacks on freedom of expression in the last 40 years of democracy,” denounced the workers' assembly.
The official version differs. In his opening speech to the ordinary sessions in Congress, on March 1, the Argentine president gave the order to close Télam because “it has been used in recent decades as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency.” His spokesman, Manuel Adorni, added this Monday that the decision is limited to fulfilling a campaign promise and “has nothing to do with the pluralism of information or the media or with issues that have to do with freedom of expression.” press”.
Adorni also gave economic reasons by stating that Télam accumulated losses this year worth 20,000 million pesos (about 24 million dollars at the official exchange rate). He anticipated that in the coming days the government plan for the closure of the company “and the fate of its workers” will be known.
The agency has been under intervention since February, like the other public media, with the aim of “modifying its organic and functional structure.” On March 1, during his opening speech to the ordinary sessions of Congress, Milei went one step further and anticipated the closure of Télam. Her argument for having “been used in recent decades as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency.”
The auditor Diego Chaher visited the agency's facilities hours before the presidential message and was positively surprised, according to the workers. “Now we don't know if it was actually a visit to recognize the agency's assets and evaluate what could be sold,” says one of the journalists who was present during Chaher's tour. The employees are afraid that these seven days of leave will be an excuse to empty Télam and debate whether to camp at the door to prevent it.
Argentina's state news agency was created in 1945 at the request of the then Secretary of Labor and Social Security, Juan Domingo Perón. Throughout its 78-year history, it has gone through failed closure attempts, as well as massive layoffs. The most recent conflict occurred in 2018, when the Government of Mauricio Macri dispensed with 40% of the Télam workforce. The Justice ordered the reinstatement of the majority of those dismissed shortly after.
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