On the verge of collapse, the Broadcast Media Law
was clamped by two rivals
By Sebastián Lacunza
Editor-in-Chief
Editor-in-Chief
The 2009 Broadcast Media Law — officially approved with the goal of expanding and diversifying the Argentine media landscape — is about to collapse.
The death knell would come if President Mauricio Macri’s government manages to repeal the law, effectively leaving the market as the sole regulator of radio, television and cable services — the goal clearly outlined yesterday by new Communications Minister Oscar Aguad, a UCR leader from Córdoba. Although not everyone in Macri’s Let’s Change coalition sees the issue in such an extreme way, we should take Aguad at his word. The official promised there would be quick news about this issue in the coming week.
If the goal of replacing the law is blocked in Congress (likely) or the courts (less likely), then the legislation will remain valid in paper only — not in practice.
It’s always undesirable when a journalist takes on the role of a fortune-teller, but this time we can predict that the Macri administration will bury the text six feet under. Aguad says that “a move by Congress cannot set limits to the president’s authority.” A truly strange concept of democracy.
The paradox is that the next four years wouldn’t be very different from the last six. The misnamed Media Law (it only regulates radio, TV and cable markets) was barely applied during President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s tenure, even though she had turned the dispute with the Clarín Group into her rallying cry. During a term-and-a-half, a number of new broadcast licences were put into the hands of universities, cooperatives and community organizations, but only a fraction are operating. The state also provided training and funding to allow new voices to be heard, but the reconfiguration of the privately run media system — the central objective of the law — was postponed.
The text of the law passed in 2009 includes legislative precedents from Northern Europe, US and Canada, where anti-trust laws rule the market and prestigious state-owned broadcasters set the pace. Beyond the turmoil sparked during the debate, Argentina’s law was praised by the international academic community, trade unions and officials from the United Nations and OAS.
But prestige meant little to the rival factions that blocked the law. On the one hand, the Clarín Group managed to get complicit courts to effectively implement a four-year freeze on the law’s anti-trust chapter. Once the Supreme Court declared the law was constitutional in October 2013, the AFSCA media watchdog made some hectic, arbitrary movements that left Clarín some room to push the legislation to its deathbed once again with the help of preliminary injunctions.
The CFK administration carried out a partial, careless enforcement of the law. It didn’t even shape the so-called technical plan, which was necessary to determine the available frequencies and the strength of each, which could help achieve the basic goal of dividing the spectrum between private, public and nonprofit organizations.
While Clarín — one of the largest media groups in the world — achieved an eternal impasse, AFSCA failed to oversee irregularities by other media groups to such an extent that it became patently ridiculous. Thus, if the first judicial injuctions benefiting Clarín were groundless, the second batch in 2014 found foothold in what was the media watchdog’s unfair treatment.
Kirchnerite leaders insist on a positive principle included in the law that demands AFSCA chief Martín Sabbatella, and the heads of state-run media, must stay in their spots until 2017. (The first president of Radio Television Argentina, Tristán Bauer resigned on Wednesday). The concept of putting in leaders that will not automatically change with a new president works in several countries, with obvious benefits in terms of plurality.
Hernán Lombardi, appointed by Macri as head of state-run media, promises a Copernican shift in the management of AFSCA, Channel 7, Radio Nacional and the news agency Télam. Beyond his statements and his open, tolerant attitude as former secretary of culture in BA City, the PRO management of Radio Ciudad (the only available example to compare) and the offer to head Channel 7 to the general producer of Dining with Mirtha Legrand, a TV programmme that staunchly backs Macri, seem to give clear hints that there shouldn’t be great expectations when it comes to pluralism.
The law protects Sabbatella. But Lombardi also has a point. It would be unprecedented if the editorial line of state-run media and the AFSCA watchdog keep the same undisguised Kirchnerite bias. What is truly legal, desirable and unlikely is that public broadcasters take on a different approach that opens doors to voices that are not usually heard and broadens the horizon of information, but the possibility of state-owned media companies staying loyal to the main opposition front would be unbearable.
Here lies another aspect of the Broadcasting Law — the plurality stipulated in Article 121. If it had been respected, AFSCA authorities would now have more room to stand their ground.
Dealing with this issue is complex because none of the protagonists of this conflict is completely right. Considering the times we’re living in, there will be reasons to complain if Argentina faces a monochrome media landscape with the corresponding blackout of information. That would be at odds with what Macri has promised.
@sebalacunza