Journalism in Argentina

As a journalist (at least of sorts), one of the things I find most frustrating about living in Argentina is how largely toothless the press is here when it comes to investigating the government, especially the ruling party of Nestor Kirchner. Granted, the U.S. press fell down on WMD claims before Iraq, but I don't mean this so much as a comparison between the U.S. and Argentine press as I do a statement of bafflement. As a journalist friend also in Buenos Aires recently noted to me, it always amazes that the more popular a regime is with the public (and Kirchner's approval ratings are something like 75-80%), the more paranoid and unwilling it is to accept dissent. As an article in the weekly news mag Noticias recently reported, Kirchner and his senator wife Cristina were displeased with a parody segment done on Marcelo Tinelli's hit show, ShowMatch, that showed actors playing the first couple fighting and portrayed Cristina as a shopaholic; nor were they happy about hidden camera pieces that made Kirchner allies look bad. So, the article reports, the regime apparently threatened Tinelli with taking Radio Del Plata from him and with removing hundreds of thousands of government pesos from his businesses. The hidden camera and parody pieces then did not appear.

If true as reported, it appears to be part of a common practice for the current Argentine government. An editorial titled "Reporting in Latin America" in yesterday's New York Times said:

In Argentina, the administration of President Carlos Menem used to file criminal libel suits against investigative reporters. But after a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ended that practice, the new president, Néstor Kirchner, simply doubled the government's spending on media advertising, and used it to keep journalists tame. At some newspapers, 75 percent of revenues come from government ads.

In the long term, media investigations into governments--even very popular ones--only help democracy.