Argentina Using Ad Money To Squeeze Local Media

by Marcela Valente

(IPS) BUENOS AIRES -- Official advertising is used in Argentina as a weapon that is capable of determining the survival or death of local media outlets in the provinces, say activists and academics.

"There is a new deadly threat to freedom of expression that has appeared in the provinces, squeezing small, alternative or community media: the manipulative way advertising contracts are handed out," Mabel Moralejo, the executive director of the Argentine Association for the Defense of Independent Journalism (which goes by the name Periodistas), told IPS.

Used to punish and reward, the lion's share of government advertising in the provinces goes to the state-run media, which are owned by provincial authorities or their friends.

By contrast, the ads rarely reach independent media outlets, and when they do they are often abruptly yanked in a bid to pressure, or even destroy, a newspaper.

According to many cases observed by Periodistas, provincial authorities often threaten to cancel official advertising contracts to get a newspaper to transfer an annoying journalist to another section, or remove columns or editorials that are critical of the regional or local administration.

Periodistas frequently receives complaints from owners of media companies of this strategy aimed at limiting freedom of expression, which is only subtle in appearance.

This weapon used to financially strangle newspapers, radio or TV stations that annoy or step on the toes of local authorities or their allies has been seen in nearly all of Argentina's 23 provinces, said Moralejo.

Although it is "very difficult" to find out how much media companies depend on official advertising, "ads are the media's main source of financing," Moralejo pointed out.

"Editors promise to give us that figure, but in the end they fail to do so, nor do we have a law on access to public information that obliges them to respond," she said.

But it is clear that official advertising has a heavy influence on local media companies, especially since Argentina's late 2001 economic meltdown, she added.

Advertising space purchased by the public administration is used to publicise government works and to publish things like calls for bids or for applicants, schedules for payments of wages or pensions, judicial information, and the results of provincial lotteries.

Using official advertising as a weapon to keep the independent media in line is a strategy that coexists with other methods of restricting the right to information and freedom of speech, like threats and physical attacks against journalists, which occur in most of the provinces, although there are a few especially bad areas.

According to a study by researcher Fernando Ruiz at the Austral University, two of the 10 "most dangerous" areas for working as a journalist in Latin America are found in Argentina: the northern province of Santiago del Estero and the southern and western part of the industrial belt that rings the city of Buenos Aires.

The study by Ruiz, who is an adviser to the Centre for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL)'s Democracy and Freedom of Expression Program, was carried out between October 2003 and April 2004. It is based on a novel approach, because it ignores national averages, to focus instead on local realities.

National statistics often cover up the enormous differences in the situations faced by journalists in different regions, said Ruiz, who added that "Argentina may earn strong marks in a national study on freedom of the press, but at the local level it has serious problems."

A report by a Periodistas delegation that visited Santiago del Estero in 2003 stated that freedom of expression is "in a state of emergency" in that impoverished province of 720,000 people, whose government spent as much on official advertising as on the entire health budget.

Journalists there work in a climate of intimidation and censorship, and are frequently the targets of attacks, threats, harassment, spying and judicial persecution, said the report.

The "climate of terror" described by Periodistas has not altogether disappeared, but has "calmed down" somewhat since the federal government assumed direct rule of the province in April due to the serious and numerous accusations of corruption and crime faced by the family-based regime led by provincial strongman Carlos Juarez and his wife, Governor Nina Aragones, who have ruled the province since 1948.

Ruiz's study also points to the numerous physical attacks, kidnappings, legal prosecutions and threats against journalists in some outlying areas of the Argentine capital.

Moralejo also referred to the media that are under the direct control of government authorities. "We support the existence of public media, but the conception held by some provincial governors is that the public media are a propaganda tool," she complained.

"The way official information is manipulated is so blatant and has become so ingrained that government officials reject the idea of a law on public access to information arguing that 'anyone could ask for it' -- which is precisely the aim" of sunshine laws, said Moralejo.

In the central province of San Luis, the only provincial newspaper that circulates throughout the entire province is El Diario de la Republica, which is owned by the family.

This year, popular protests achieved the repeal of a law in San Luis that allowed editors to be thrown in jail or copies of a publication seized if they were deemed to incite "sedition, subversion or slander."

In the northern province of Salta, there is one notable initiative that has successfully overcome the barriers of censorship. Nestor Gauna, a reporter who worked nearly 20 years for the El Tribuno provincial daily, launched an independent newspaper that is not only surviving, but thriving.

Gauna created his Nuevo Diario de Salta three years ago, working with just one other journalist. The publication was comprised of a mere eight pages, and only 750 copies were printed at the start, with the support of a handful of ads. He himself put the newspaper together and distributed it free of charge, he told IPS by phone.

His paper has a different news agenda from that of El Tribuno, which is owned by the family of Governor Juan Carlos Romero. "People needed a means of free expression, where independent journalism that is not tied to official advertising is practised, and that's where I found a niche," he said.

The Nuevo Diario de Salta now has a staff of 20 and prints 7,500 copies a day. "We used to come out Monday through Friday, and now we also put out a Sunday edition, which includes a magazine as well," said Gauna, who added that the paper is now 40 pages long and is no longer free.

The "diarito" or "little newspaper" -- the term used by the public when they ask for the paper at the kiosks, alluding to the size of the pages -- has been responsible for a drop in sales of El Tribuno, from 15,000 to 7,500 copies. The market is now divvied up between the two publications.

"Without meaning to, we have turned into competition for the governor's newspaper," he said.

Local authorities and political leaders have tried different tactics to discourage or control the new paper, said Gauna. For example, they have tried to pressure the distributors, as well as businesses and others who take out ads in the newspaper. They also offered official advertising, which was then abruptly withdrawn.

In addition, Governor Romero's opponents have tried to buy the paper.

"We don't want to be an opposition paper, but we don't 'buy' the version that Salta is Alice in Wonderland, either," said Gauna. "The paper is successful because we call the shots as we see them, and report what is really happening."