Argentine government suspends Télam news agency and fences its headquarters

The Argentine government suspended the state news agency Télam for a week on Monday and fenced off two of its buildings in Buenos Aires, following far-right President Javier Milei’s announcement on Friday that he would close the 78-year-old company for allegedly being an instrument “propaganda”.

“Last night (Sunday) we found this brutal decision by the government to fill the two Télam headquarters with police and fences“Tomás Eliaschev, journalist and union representative of Télam, told AFP.

Eliaschev narrated that he had received, like the rest of the employees, an email in the early hours of Monday through which the staff was notified that “You are exempt from providing your labor debt for a period of seven days with pay (salary).”.

With more than 700 employees, including administrators, journalists and photographers, Télam’s news service broadcasts more than 500 cables per day with national information, about 200 photographs and video, radio and social media content.

“The Télam agency plays a role for democracy, not only are the jobs of 770 families affected, but also the right to information“, Eliaschev protested, adding that the workers are evaluating measures in “all fronts“, he “political, union and legal” to reverse the decision.

The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, declared that ““This has nothing to do with information pluralism or press freedom.”

This year “Télam had an estimated loss of 20,000 million pesos (US$ 23 million at the official exchange rate). “What is happening is neither more nor less than what the president promised during the campaign,” he explained.

Milei, who defines himself as a “anarchocapitalist”, he took office in December promising to reduce the role of the State to a minimum.

Before Adorni’s conference, journalists accredited to the presidency showed signs that said “Telam does not close”.

Under reconstruction

The allied deputy Fernando Iglesias wrote, in a tweet shared by Milei, that “the attempt to make Télam self-sustainable, impartial and competitive” had already been attempted during the government of the right-wing Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), but “It failed due to the fierce and extremist opposition” whose is it “They ask today for the rights of workers”.

The agency’s website was down Monday, with a notice that reads: “Page under reconstruction.”

Around the agency’s headquarters, in the center of Buenos Aires, several hundred people demonstrated to repudiate the measure with a “symbolic hug” to the building.

“I came because it is important for the State to have a medium that is, literally, the only one that is federal, the only one that when something happens in (the remote provinces of) Santiago del Estero or in Tierra del Fuego is“Eric Soto, a 27-year-old graphic designer, told AFP at the protest.

For Martín Becerra, specialist in media and cultural industries, it remains to be seen if this “will be realized in the facts”.

“The Milei government has so far been more effective in making bombastic announcements than in managing the State, since even in the case of a closure there is an enormous management challenge“, he told AFP, citing the “constant improvisation in daily management”.

He added that “This plays an important place in their ‘cultural battle’ copied from former US President Donald Trump and other far-right sectors.”. According to Becerra, they are measures designed to blame the democratic forces that reject them for “not understanding poverty” that, in reality, “Milei’s own economic policy aggravates.”

“Propaganda agency”

In his speech at the opening of sessions of Congress on Friday, Milei maintained that Télam was “used during the last decades as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency”, in reference to the political space related to former president Cristina Kirchner.

At the beginning of February, the new ultraliberal Argentine government decreed the intervention of all state media for one year to “modify the organic and functional structure”.

The measure included public radio and television, the Télam agency, the educational portal Educ.ar, the Audiovisual Production Pole and the Argentine Audiovisual Bank of Universal Contents (Bacua).

The agency was created on April 15, 1945 by the then Secretary of Labor and then three-time President Juan Domingo Perón, in a mixed public-private capital scheme.

In 1959, under the presidency of the radical Arturo Frondizi, it was privatized. In 1963, President José María Guido closed Télam for, supposedly, “spread false and biased information”. In 1968, the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía decided to nationalize it.