Abstract
The media has been a political football in Argentina for years. Now, as
And that is worrying commentators who blame the election in Brazil of the far-right populist president Jair Bolsonaro, in part on the influence of unreliable Whatsapp groups and “fake news” sites. They wonder whether there could be a similar rise in populism in Argentina where people are losing confidence in the established local media.
The crisis in journalism is acute. Newspapers and news agencies are closing, journalists are losing their jobs and people say they do not trust traditional news outlets any more.
Since Mauricio Macri took over as president of Argentina three years ago, more than 3,000 journalists have lost their jobs, according to the Forum of Argentine Journalism (Fopea).
El Gráfico, one of Latin America’s most prestigious sport magazines, closed down in 2018 after 99 years on the market; the English-language daily Buenos Aires Herald disappeared after 140 years; and regional media laid off workers and contributors including at Río Negro, Patagonia’s largest newspaper.
The private national news agency Diaros y Noticias (Dyn) closed in November 2017, and in June 2018 the state-run agency Telam laid off journalists and its overall output went down.
“Dyn was the only strong and independent agency in Argentina,” said Daniel Dessein, president of La Gaceta, the largest newspaper in north-western Argentina. “It reported on what happened in every province beyond Buenos Aires. Now, in terms of information, provinces have fewer channels to learn about what happens in the rest of the country. It is generating an insularity effect.” Martín Becerra, Argentina’s leading media analyst, told Index that there were “broad consequences for freedom of expression” after these closures. “Society as a whole is affected by the decline of sources for local and regional information as well as professionally edited perspectives,” he said.
Dessein agrees: “Democracy is undoubtedly affected by the decline in the journalistic flow, quality and rigour and by the decline of diversity and plurality of voices. All this affects public debate.”
In response to this crisis other outlets are setting up shop. Chani Guyot worked for 20 years as an editor at La Nación, one of Argentina’s largest newspapers. In 2017, he left his role as editor-in-chief and started Redacción, a digital enterprise dedicated to local stories.
Guyot views Redacción as an antidote to the media crisis: “We claim we are doing human journalism,” he said. The publication, which finances itself thanks to private donations and a membership model, focuses on social issues that are not covered by other media.
Redacción is part of a new landscape of digital media that create alternative coverage. Chequeado, Cosecha Roja, Revista Anfibia, Latfem, lavaca and Futurock radio, which are funded by members or thanks to grants, are among the most prestigious.
For Hinde Pomeraniec, culture editor at the Infobae news portal, it is social networks, which are providing the diversity of opinions and information that the media now lack.
“When I get asked what to read in order to get a balanced opinion, what I recommend is to follow specific journalists more than media,” she told Index. “Because you may find very rigorous journalists working for media that you do not trust.”
Néstor Sclauzero, news manager of the staterun TV Pública, and president of Fopea, also believes that the digital world is creating new opportunities. In television, for example, costs have become much lower, giving regional media new opportunities.
“Before, it was impossible to set up a TV station. Now with a smartphone and a laptop you can produce a decent TV report and make it circulate,” he said.
The crisis which has struck Argentina’s traditional media is not unlike what is happening worldwide, where the painful transition into the digital age has led to layoffs. What makes the crisis of Argentina’s media more acute is that it went through a brief period of bonanza just as the rest of the world started readjusting some 10 years ago.
Under the previous presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the government poured millions into advertising that partly financed the creation of new media aligned to the government. It was part of Fernández de Kirchner’s battle against private media concentration.
For example, over the 2009-2015 period, pro-government Grupo Veintitrés was the largest receiver of advertising funds, receiving $53 million, according to La Nación newspaper.
That money partly financed the opening of new media, such as the newspaper Tiempo Argentino. The connection to Fernández de Kirchner was apparent in the paper’s editorial position, which was supportive of the government’s social-oriented policies and vocal against the opposition – so much so that critics accused it of publishing propaganda.
When Macri took over, Grupo Veintitrés saw its close relationship with the government end abruptly. The owners disappeared, leaving journalists stranded without pay. At Tiempo Argentino, staff got together and started functioning as a co-operative, which is still going strong after three years.
“Advertising was supposed to be an incentive, but it had two limitations: it concentrated on traditional media at a time when digital media were gaining ground, and it did not actually improve the quality of journalism,” said Adriana Amado, president of Infociudadana, an NGO dedicated to improving the quality of information for citizens. “It was like steroids. When the money came to an end, the muscles did not last.”
The crisis hit all media, regardless of ideology, because all benefited from government advertising. However, given Argentina’s concentrated media market was in the capital, Buenos Aires, those who took the hardest hit were smaller, regional media.
Things became even harder in 2018, when the economy shrank by 2.8% and inflation hit a 27-year high of 47.6%.
Moreover, when Macri took over he issued a decree that transferred regulatory power over the media to Enacom, a newly formed agency heavily influenced by the government. He also signed off on several emergency decrees that reshaped the media landscape, changing aspects of the 2009 Broadcast Media Law. One of the results was the weakening of anti-trust regulations, which led to a further concentration in the hands of the Clarín group (the country’s largest media conglomerate) after a merger between its Cablevision and telecommunications giant Telecom.
Argentina still ranks quite highly in international freedom of expressions indexes and is considered a far freer environment for the media than other regional players such as Venezuela, Nicaragua or Mexico.
But Becerra argues that media concentration is damaging: “Excessive concentration damages the diversity of content and restricts the exercise of freedom of expression of other social and political actors,” he said.
Where does this leave Argentina’s media at the beginning of an electoral process?
Argentines do not trust their media when it comes to politics. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, only 37% of Argentines believe their news media are reporting the different positions on political issues fairly.
In 2017, only 57% of the population read newspapers, compared with 73% in 2013, says the state-run Cultural Information System of Argentina. At the same time, 70% of the population goes online every day, compared with only 9% in 2013. In 2017, a quarter of the population got its news from social networks or online portals.
“Traditional media disengaged from their audiences, they did not manage to build a community,” said Amado. “This is the perfect breeding ground for Whatsapp groups and ‘fake news’ on Facebook.”
The new media platforms such as Redacción are rising to this challenge, but whether they will be successful holding power to account and reporting the news as comprehensively as traditional media remains to be seen.
A man sells newspapers depicting President Mauricio Macri’s election victory in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 2015
CREDIT: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
As elections approach, Argentinian media will face a new public test: where will voters go for their news, and how much will this affect the results? For Amado, the challenge to democracy will come from this new, more active model of participation. “Latin America was always marked by a journalism that legitimates power and relates what official sources say,” she said. “Now there are more active citizens, for better or for worse.”
Elsewhere in Latin America
In Paraguay, where there are no legal limits on media concentration, El Surtidor was born in 2016 as an antidote to the mainstream narrative. It is a visual journalism platform where features are often presented as comics. It is led by a not-for-profit co-operative of journalists and mainly sustained by grants and a membership model.
In Brazil, the membership model has made it possible for media such as Agência Pública to carry out investigations into environmental or social issues that are not usually tackled by established media.