Macri’s gov’t combines market concentration with biased state advertising policy
By Sebastián Lacunza
Editor-in-Chief
The idea that the Kirchners’ governments made an abusive use of state advertising is almost beyond discussion. Both presidents directed mountains of public funds to close tycoons (more than ideological, ties were commercial) without any reasonable criteria or control. They could have created a more diversified market even in an unorthodox way but they failed. The amounts of money handed by the Kirchners administrations evaporated in the hands of fugitive businessmen. Others, as the presidential change took place last December, rushed negotiations to offer their loyalty to their new backer — Mauricio Macri. The advertising policy was absurd even from a pragmatic point of view in a framework where the government needed to face the opposition held by the powerful Clarín Group. Even if the previous government managed to expand the diversiy of voices for a while, it accepted deals with journalists and media outlets (no matter their ideologies, some of them were even fascists) to guarantee silence on sensitive issues (especially those convenient for the pockets of some ministers). It is fair to say that the model was not only Kirchnerite. The Mauricio Macri administration in Buenos Aires City and any ruler in the country, from Santa Fe’s Socialists to the right leaning Peronists in other provinces chose the same pattern: arbitrary privileges for allies, wasteful expenditure and dark accounts.
Editor-in-Chief
The idea that the Kirchners’ governments made an abusive use of state advertising is almost beyond discussion. Both presidents directed mountains of public funds to close tycoons (more than ideological, ties were commercial) without any reasonable criteria or control. They could have created a more diversified market even in an unorthodox way but they failed. The amounts of money handed by the Kirchners administrations evaporated in the hands of fugitive businessmen. Others, as the presidential change took place last December, rushed negotiations to offer their loyalty to their new backer — Mauricio Macri. The advertising policy was absurd even from a pragmatic point of view in a framework where the government needed to face the opposition held by the powerful Clarín Group. Even if the previous government managed to expand the diversiy of voices for a while, it accepted deals with journalists and media outlets (no matter their ideologies, some of them were even fascists) to guarantee silence on sensitive issues (especially those convenient for the pockets of some ministers). It is fair to say that the model was not only Kirchnerite. The Mauricio Macri administration in Buenos Aires City and any ruler in the country, from Santa Fe’s Socialists to the right leaning Peronists in other provinces chose the same pattern: arbitrary privileges for allies, wasteful expenditure and dark accounts.
Macri came to change the model, he says. The rhetoric does not hold true so far. In an archetypal action of Let’s Change, they made two parallel movements just to worsen the situation. On the one hand, they freed the Clarin Group from all antitrust limitations unsuccessfully set up by the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner government. Argentina’s largest multimedia may now keep and even expand its most profitable unit, Cablevisión, while it already set foot in the mobile telephone market. Names of giants that Clarín says it fears are circulating. Some of them already have a market presence but they are still constrained by the law (Telefonica, Mexico’s Telmex, AT&T) as others are said to be landing soon in Argentina (Time Warner, Virgin) but between these unmaterialized bickering, the Noble Herrera-Magnetto group is the only giant that began to run the race. Its competitors are still in the boxes.
Once the dominance of Clarín is consolidated, Macri’s presidency implements a new policy of state advertising based on a “market approach.” The result is that among the 15 largest media groups benefitted with the public ads, Clarín more than triples its nearest competitor, La Nación (see story on page 7).
“Macrism waves the flag of its differences from the Kirchner era distancing itself from concepts, practices and styles. But the obsession about controlling the flows of information is not one of them,” Martín Becerra, a professor of the University of Quilmes wrote this week on the Letra P website. As the Macri administration closes deals with the greatest market players and some TV stars, the government also enjoys the generosity of a number of the mainstream editorialists who take the responsibility of standing up for the Pink House’s interest as their own. “The government outsources part of the construction of the myth to others’ pencils,” the expert in political communication Mario Riorda said in a recent interview with La Nación.
As if market concentration and a fexiblized labour market weren’t enough to silence voices, the national administration has chosen a more direct course of action. In these few months, it tried to alienate journalists from social protests (with a so-called “anti-riots protocol”) or to approve prison terms and fines for those who report details of the officials’ affidavits. A not-so-subtle media manipulation.
The weekend came with the novelty of an agreement “to protect journalists” between the Ministry of Security, the media owners’ umbrella Adepa and an organization of about 400 journalists Fopea (both organizations are usually partners). The new security protocol says that Adepa an Fopea will gather any complaint of dangerous situations for journalists. Other press organizations and unions were excluded from the agreement, so the answer was immediate. Last night, 40 unions of journalists from all the country rejected an attempt that “invoking international treaties and declarations with constitutional status that are indisputable (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, judgments of the Supreme Court or UN resolutions), and concepts such as democracy, freedom of expression, right to information and tolerance, (Security Minister Patricia) Bullrich, ADEPA and FOPEA carried out a corporate, elitist and malicious use of these principles.”