Alejandro Alfie
07/07/2020 - 15:02
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The journalists responsible for the main media outlets demanded a greater commitment from the Government to freedom of expression.
During the annual meeting of the Christian Association of Business Leaders (ACDE), Ricardo Kirschbaum, José del Río, Daniel Hadad and Gustavo González -moderated by Graciela Martini, of ACDE- stated that there must be a healthy tension between the State and journalism , without the Government intending to advance on the independence of the media.
"Until 2015 there was a strategy of creating state journalism, which became propaganda journalism, trying to stifle the media that showed their will to be independent," said Ricardo Kirschbaum, general secretary of Drafting of Clarín. And he added: "It is a latent trend, rooted in Argentina, a tension that will continue to develop, beyond the democratic wills expressed rhetorically. There are facts that this tendency to affect freedom of opinion is still present. Therefore you always have to be on your guard. But the general trend of the media has deepened that, because the media are increasingly reduced in their economic strength and that is a danger that is always present. "
It is that the coronavirus pandemic had a paradoxical effect in the traditional media: on the one hand, it significantly increased its audience on digital platforms, due to the credibility of the media; but on the other, costs increased and advertising revenue decreased, as a result of the generalized economic crisis.
José del Río, General Secretary of the Editorial Office of La Nación, asked that "we do not live in the silence of the businessmen again, because that silence is expensive. We have lived it many times already and the time to speak is now, when a segment of the government begins to question freedom of expression and questions private property, issues that were believed to have been overcome, but which put us in a retrograde situation again. "
"Yesterday I was reading statements by an official who said that since I did not like such a journalist, it would be better to turn it off, prohibit someone I do not like. It is an idea that cannot go unnoticed," said the head of the journalistic area of La Nación, in what It was interpreted as an indirect allusion to the case of Baby Etchecopar, of whom the defender of the Public of Audiovisual Communication, Miriam Lewin, said that her management aimed at "not being heard in society".
In the same sense, Daniel Hadad, founder and CEO of Infobae, said that "the Argentine business community is closed-mouthed, panicked, afraid and the truth is that I don't understand why . I'm not hearing voices about what is happening and what will happen to us in a very short time. " And he put as a symbol of what is happening what happened to Marcos Galperín, the creator of Mercado Libre, the company with the highest value in Argentina, who had to move to Uruguay at the beginning of the year. "We should reflect there," added Hadad, who was concerned that Justice "is not working 100 percent."
Hadad and Del Río agreed to question some initiatives of the Government, with an impact on the economy, such as the parliamentary annulment of the formation of the Simplified Stock Companies (SAS). "I see attacks on companies, with restrictions on SAS and teleworking, when it is the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who generate genuine jobs," said Hadad. "When I go against the world and put paper where there was technology, the investor goes to the neighboring country because we are not an island," added Del Río. Both also rated in a negative way the initiative to regulate telework, which had half sanction in Deputies. "I hope that the Senate will put a brake on it. It was a modality that had been working well for five years and now Papa Estado came to hinder it," said Hadad.
Kirschbaum considered that "the businessman must continue betting and seek to make politics understand the need to create harmony. Going from one extreme to the other only means decadence". And he stressed that "the legitimacy of information and its verification are fundamental in this context of fake news and biased news. The strength of journalism lies, in this context, in putting on stage the tendencies of governments to concentrate the handling of information and the denial of the facts. "
The president of Editorial Perfil, Gustavo González, maintained that in all countries it is taking place that the State has greater economic and political intervention, as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. "But that may conflict with other rights, such as property and freedom of expression. This is a historical issue and we have had a flare-up in recent days," said González. This trend occurs along with a greater virulence of certain sectors in social networks. For this reason, "the media, in addition to having the hard skin to resist the pressures, we must help like never before to try to find places for dialogue and basic agreements," added the president of Perfil.