Argentine public media social networks and websites are temporarily suspended for the purpose of “reorganization.” While President Javier Milei wants to privatize a lot of public services, the decision also comes a few months after the closure of the Télam news agency, creating an uncertain atmosphere over the direction of the government’s control over national media and potential censorship.
The public media announcement came on Tuesday from Radio y Television Argentina, the state company in charge of managing public television, national radio, and its stations like FM Clásica, FM Rock or FM Folclórica. The measure will remain enacted “until work processes and and content production are reorganized.”
The legend, “site under reconstruction” now appears on all public media websites.
Although it remains unclear what “internal reorganization” means, responses have raised concerns about the government’s control over national media and whether the measure is a further attempt to privatize public media — one of Javier Milei’s first promises that he has sought to fulfill since becoming president in 2023.
Trade unions have been the first to openly criticize the government shutdown of public media, warning against what they consider to be a step towards authoritarian censorship.
On X, FATPREN, the Argentine Federation of Press Workers, posted a statement “expressing [their] repudiation of the silencing of social networks” and calling the measure an “illegal” move by Milei’s government for bypassing Congress to enact “censorship” in public media. They also called for senators to reject the privatization of independent media “in defense of information sovereignty.”
Milei’s attacks on public media
This is not Milei’s government’s first intervention in public media, however. Back in February, the government announced the closure of the largest state news agency in Latin America, Télam, providing a timeline for voluntary retirement before moving forward with dismissals of personnel. According to La Nación, at least 47% of the 770 workers have already negotiated their departure from the agency.
President Milei justified his ultra-liberal decision by describing the news agency as a “Kirchnerist propaganda agency,” referring to the political movement led by former center-left President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, his political enemy.
The criticism was rejected by journalists, who, in an interview with BBC Mundo, also a publicly-owned media, described it as “reductionist,” stating that the news agency “predates the creation of Kirchnerism” and has a “strictly professional treatment.”
The closure was reprimanded by a unionist as an “unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in Argentina.” SiPreBa, the Buenos Aires press trade union, published a statement in response: “The closure of Télam would not only be illegal but also illegitimate. It would be an attack on the entire media system, public and private, pluralism, and federalism.”
According to President Milei, Televisión Pública is also a “propaganda machine,” that portrays his party negatively 75% of the time, incentivizing him to move forward with his wider privatization program as a solution to the lack of pluralism in the media.
However, in an interview with the Reuters Institute, journalist and professor Natalí Schejtman argued that publicly-owned media are “strategic to democracy” and should be improved to fulfill this role, rather than be removed altogether.
On April 30, the Committee to Protect Journalists, an American non-profit organization promoting press freedom, released a statement urging President Milei to immediately refrain from attacking journalists in Argentina. The statement came after a report by FOPEA, an Argentine press freedom organization, reported 17 attacks on the press between March 19 and April 18, in which the President used language such as “corrupt,” “liars,” and “extortioners” to describe journalists.
A legislative boost for Milei’s privatization bill
Legislators in Argentina are debating the “Bases Bill,” a legislative package including 230 reforms that the President has struggled to push through Congress. The bill was sent back to committees to be rewritten in February.
The proposed law, which would grant President Milei special powers to privatize state-owned companies and initiate a new investment scheme and labor reform, was approved by the parliament’s lower house with 142 votes in favor and 106 against in April and is now awaiting approval in the Senate. Meanwhile, protestors demonstrated outside Congress against the proposed legislation.
UNI Global Union, an international trade union for service workers, issued a statement on May 6 calling for international solidarity with trade unions in Argentina to protect public broadcasting and preserve democracy, referring to the Bases Bill as an “attack on democracy.”
“Reorganization”: Predicting the worst?
Some critics of the measures have even gone as far as to make allusions between Milei’s reforms and the dictatorship of 1976. Manuela Castañeira of the Socialist Movement Party (MAS) posted on X: “He also makes allusions to the dictatorship of ’76 using the concept of ‘reorganization process.’ It is clear that freedom of expression and the right to information are incompatible with his government.”
Ms Castañeira referred to the National Reorganization Process, the military dictatorship characterized by heavy censorship and human rights abuses that governed Argentina from the coup d’état of March 1976 until December 1983.
