The Miami Herald fairly aptly describes how the Government is trying to muzzle the press as next year's presidential elections approach. The law they propose would effectively give the government the power to purchase and distribute at will all paper pulp in the country. Imports of pulp would also be banned.
BY CAROLINA BARROS
SPECIAL TO THE MIAMI HERALD
BUENOS AIRES -- In the strongest attack on the media since the country's dictatorship, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has moved to take over the country's largest newsprint mill that provides paper to most of Argentina's newspapers.
But reaction was swift Wednesday to Fernández de Kirchner's decision, announced in a national speech late Tuesday. Newspaper owners and legislators accused her administration of seeking to muzzle the independent media, political manipulation and returning Argentina to a period of ``unlimited authoritarianism.''
Mrs. Kirchner said the newspapers illegally purchased Papel Prensa in 1976 during the military regime, and she accused the papers of crimes against humanity because shareholders had been ``pressured'' by newspapers and the military through ``state terrorism'' to sell the company.
"It is a vertically integrated monopoly,'' she said, adding that ``whoever controls it, controls the written word.''
Opposition parties issued a statement stressing that they ``would defend press freedom'' when the takeover bill is submited to Congress.
The President's action comes amid a long-running feud between her administration and the powerful Clarín Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the country.
It's also the latest in a wider wave of media crackdowns across Latin America. In Venezuela, for example, the administration of President Hugo Chávez has been accused of using the courts to muzzle the media.
Last week, facing international pressure, the Venezuelan government reversed a measure that would have allowed it to ban newspapers and television stations from reporting about the country's soaring crime rate. That ban was announced after an opposition newspaper, El Nacional, ran a grizzly, eight-month old picture of a morgue on its front page.
The clash between Fernández de Kirchner and the independent media was ignited in 2008 when conservative daily La Nación and the Clarín Group sided with the farming sector in its battle against the government's increase in export duties.
After a four-month escalation of street protests and blockades, the bill was defeated in Congress, the first time the president's Peronist Victory Front had lost a congressional vote since 2003.
Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, blamed the loss on the media and especially on the Clarín, a former government supporter.
``The government believes that it is the media that sets the trends in the electoral social order,'' said Sergio Berenstein, a pollster and media analyst. ``They know that a 35 percent support for Cristina and a similar percentage for Nestor won't be enough to win the October 2011's presidential election.
Miami Herald staff writer Jim Wyss contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/25/1792659/in-argentina-crackdown-on-paper.html#storyBody#ixzz0xipMcVl0
No comments:
Post a Comment