Argentina takeover of paper mill heats up feud with media

Argentina takeover of paper mill heats up feud with media – by Carolina Barros

Argentines debate a decision by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to take over the country’s largest newsprint mill, the latest episode in her feud with the media.

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.”

Fernández de 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.

Fernández de Kirchner’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.

In June, the president of Globovisión, Venezuela’s last openly critical television station, fled the country after a court ordered his arrest on what he maintains are trumped-up charges designed to silence the station.

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.

With the political opposition split into a dozen parties and little chances of merging into a coalition, the Kirchners have chosen the independent media as their political opponent ahead of next year’s presidential elections, analysts say.

“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.

Federico Pinedo, head of the center right PRO caucus in the Lower House, said the consequences could be dire if the government achieves its goal of taking over the mill and shutting down Clarín’s Fibertel Internet service.

“If they [the Kirchners] succeed in this takeover . . . and in interrupting Fibertel’s Internet service, it will be like breaking a dam, and from there on we will be under unlimited authoritarianism,” he says.

A Clarín official said his company is prepared to go to court to defend its name.

“The group is awaiting that the legal system to assign a court to the case in order to proceed and probably sue the government on false allegations,” said Martin Etchevers, the company’s communications manager. “We will defend our rights in court.”

Papel Prensa produces 75 percent of the newsprint used by Argentina’s newspaperswith the rest coming from imports. Currently, Clarín owns 49 percent; La Nación, 22.49 percent; the government, 27.46; and state-owned news agency, Telam, 0.62 percent.

Etchevers said the escalation of attacks on the media conglomerate reflects how Nestor Kirchner’s feelings about the media,

“He can only dwell in a binary system with friends or foes,” he said, adding that this helps explain whey he sees the media as an enemy.