Public media is “a propaganda mechanism” and should “be in the hands of the private sector.” This is the reasoning of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, whose Government suspended the broadcast of content on all the websites and social networks of state communication companies on Tuesday afternoon. The measure, which aroused the rejection of unions and human rights organizations, is added to a series of decisions that are moving towards the dismantling of public media, in which some 3,500 workers work throughout the country: 2,442 in public radio and television. , 810 in the Télam agency and 234 in the state Public Content Society, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses. Since March, Milei has paralyzed Télam, the largest state agency in Latin America.
“Site under reconstruction” is the message returned by the screen of the Public Television website, where the channel’s contents could be seen until a few hours ago. The same words have been reproduced on the platforms of national radio stations, educational and cultural channels since this Tuesday, when the Government decided to discontinue broadcasts.
“Public media are in a reorganization process that aims to improve the production, realization and dissemination of the content that is generated,” the official statement argued. And he assured that “that is why the decision has been made to temporarily pause all the content of the social networks and websites of Public Television, National Radio, the stations of the interior, FM Clásica, FM Rock, FM Folklorica, Paka Paka and Canal Encuentro ”.
The general secretary of the Buenos Aires Press Union (Sipreba), Agustín Lecchi, warned that “the measure is in line with a policy of destroying public media, attacking critical journalism and suffocating non-profit media.” , he evaluated. “With this they seek to build a story that allows them to carry out a brutal adjustment against the people,” he added. Other unions spoke out against “censorship in public media” and “the digital blackout.”
The Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) warned that “the closure of public media websites and networks” implies “a new step by the government against the right to communication.” Another human rights organization, the group Hijos, pointed out that “Milei’s government censors public media in the name of a ‘reorganization process’, terms that in our country are part of the memory of the genocidal dictatorship. Communication is a right. Silence is functional to impunity.” The dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983 called itself the “national reorganization process.”
Milei has repeated that his purpose is to privatize public media, another chapter in his plan for fiscal adjustment and shrinking of the State. “Everything that can be in the hands of the private sector, is going to be in the hands of the private sector,” he said just after being elected president, last November, when he also defined public radio and TV as “ a propaganda mechanism.” With that conviction, the far-right president ordered the intervention of the state media system in February and, in March, he proclaimed the closure of the Télam news agency: the decision was never formally finalized, but the agency is inactive and its files are inaccessible. Its employees – who are offered voluntary retirement – cannot go to work although they continue to receive their salaries; For more than two months they have been protesting in front of the agency’s headquarters. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), at the end of the year 810 workers were working in Télam. In the group of Public TV and National Radio there were 2,442, while the state company Public Contents added another 234 employees.
The privatization of media companies is now being discussed in the Senate, as part of the so-called base law, which has already obtained approval from the Chamber of Deputies.
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