Abstract
A worker checks the damages at the office at Tiempo Argentino newspaper in Buenos Aires on 4 July 2016
CREDIT: Juan Mabromata / AFP /Getty Images
When Argentinian newspaper Tiempo Argentino lost funding after a change in government, the staff decided to go it alone as a co-operative – but it turned nasty when their offices were violently attacked.
“They didn’t steal anything. They were clearly here to break things, to make us stop producing the paper and going on air,” Javier Borelli, president of the co-operative, told Index after the attack.
A portrait of murdered Argentinian journalist Rodolfo Walsh was smashed in the July raid. Index on Censorship published Walsh’s open letter to the military junta in 1977
By this point staff had already been through months of upheaval. Under the previous president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they were establishment darlings. Adopting a pro-government position had won the publication major state advertising deals. But when a new president, Marci Macri, was elected in December 2015, this funding dried up. Their employer stopped paying their salaries, and the new owner, who was believed to be businessman Mariano Martínez Rojas, had not paid any bills.
Worse still, Martínez Rojas was seen accompanying the heavies into the building on that July morning. Photographs showed him leaving the destroyed building with a police guard. Journalists at the co-operative had long been suspicious that the sale was a set-up by the previous owners to wash their hands of the business.
“This attack is unprecedented since Argentina’s return to democracy,” Gabriel Michi, a member of the Argentinian Journalism Forum (Fopea) and reporter for Radio América, told Index, referring to the end of the military dictatorship in 1983. “It’s one of the worst attacks against freedom of expression.”
The new government also condemned the attack, releasing a statement on the same day, which said workers were “victims of the irresponsible actions of a group of businessmen”. But the co-operative was worried by remarks made by President Macri, who said that “any type of misappropriation is bad” when referring to the co-operative’s use of the office.
After Macri took office, Grupo 23, which owned several publications, including Tiempo Argentino, a TV channel and three radio stations, saw its close relationship with the government end abruptly. The following month its sale was announced.
During the period between 2009 and 2015, Grupo 23 received more than 800 million Argentinian pesos (US$53 million) from the previous government, more than any other media group in the country, according to an investigation by La Nación newspaper. The connection to former President Fernández was also apparent in the paper’s editorial position, which was supportive of the government’s socially oriented policies and vocal against the opposition: so much so critics accused it of publishing propaganda.
In March 2016, Tiempo Argentino relaunched itself, inspired by another Argentinian media co-operative, lavaca, and many recovered factories that were taken over by workers following Argentina’s financial crash in 2001. “Owners of our own words” was the strapline. The first self-managed edition appeared on 24 March 2016 and, on the same day, sold 35,000 copies at a march that marked the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s military coup. It was a significant improvement compared to the 7,000 copies sold daily in the last months of 2015, according to representatives of the co-operative, which has called itself Por Más Tiempo (which translates as For More Tiempo, or, literally, For More Time, playing on the idea that they are here to stay).
“It was the first money we had seen since December 2015. We split it among all the workers and left some aside to finance the following edition,” Borelli told Index.
The paper now functions as an online daily and appears in print on Sundays. Directors, editors and reporters (120 in total), and also assistants and cleaners, earn the same amount per hour. This has meant a pay cut for editors and directors, but others earn the same or more than before. Since March, the paper has already published several scoops and set the news agenda. For example, it was the first paper to delve deeper into information about Macri’s undeclared offshore companies, a story initially revealed by the Panama papers’ leak and denied by the president himself. “We believe there are other ways of doing journalism,” said Borelli. “It’s harder because there is less money around, but self-management makes us independent from the economic and political powers.”
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Tiempo’s newspaper offices, a Buenos Aires prosecutor indicted Martínez Rojas and the other men for usurping and damaging the newsroom. Journalists were told they could continue to work in the building and the state has provided them with security. The ministry of labour had already given custody of the building to the co-operative back in March, while judicial proceedings were started against the owners for missed rent payments.
Yet Borelli remains concerned, and the co-operative’s lawyer has called for an investigation into the police’s role on the night of the raid. “Macri himself never condemned the attack,” said Borelli. “Today Tiempo Argentino is one of the few media that is opposed to his administration. He’s sending us a message.”
In an email exchange with Index, Hernán Lombardi, the minister in charge of public media, did not refer to Macri’s comments, but he did condemn the incidents. “An attack against any media is an attack against a sacred public good: freedom of press and the circulation of ideas,” he said. “We can’t forget that during the previous government there were businessmen that filled their pockets. Those who worked at the newspaper were the first ones to be harmed by the mismanagement of the owners and of the previous government, who used the money of all Argentines to create media that clearly could not sustain themselves.”
According to Martín Becerra, an independent media analyst at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, the government has not done enough to protect Tiempo Argentino and its sister radio station Radio América. “The attack compromises freedom of expression of media with which the current administration has shown an attitude of superiority and has refused to deal with,” Becerra told Index.
Becerra also said that the current media landscape is challenging in terms of the idea of plurality.
Under the last government, the opposition found space to express their voice in private media such as the Clarín group and La Nación newspaper, which were openly against the previous administrations. But that is not the case now.
“As I see it now, the media landscape is very unbalanced. There are voices with much presence, power and audience that are generally very friendly towards Macri, and there is no counterbalance in terms of criticism of the current administration, which is necessary in a democracy,” said Becerra.