The Kirchners step-up attacks against “La Nación”
By Tony Pagliaro
28.12.05 | Both Argentina’s President Néstor Kirchner and his very powerful wife, Senator Cristina Kirchner, have dramatically increased their attacks against the leading Argentine free daily newspaper: “La Nación”. This has occurred because the authoritarian couple cannot tolerate freedom of the press.
In fact, as we have again and again stated from these very same columns, their political power is built on a rather strange “operating marriage” between the Kirchners on one side and Argentina’s media mogul: Héctor Magnetto on the other. Magnetto, through his large monopolistic media empire, constantly adulates the Kirchners and approves and supports whatever they do, thus generating and maintaining a favorable “public opinion” or the Kirchners.
Both the President and his wife are now constantly and publicly attacking “La Nación”, the most influential paper in Argentina and (with “Ambito Financiero”) one of the only two independent daily newspapers in the country.
Most journalists are -one way or the other- in the Kirchners couple long payroll. The few who are not, like Joaquín Morales Solá, are now courageously alerting Argentina’s population that freedom of opinion is not guaranteed any longer in Argentina.
The Kirchners started attacking freedom of the press through dealing with the media pockets, i.e. through selectively deciding which (friendly) newspaper is to receive “official advertising income”, and which (free) is not. Obviously, those who constantly back the Kirchners’ administration do receive the bulk of said advertising. Instead, those that dare to be independent are normally excluded from said advertising.
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