"At four o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, more than forty journalists walked out of the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., carrying boxes containing their belongings. They had worked for years, accredited at the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. This was the reaction to the revocation of credentials for a group of them, as well as the restrictions imposed by the Donald Trump administration on reporting on military activities. Five months later, on March 20, 2026, a court declared the federal government's restrictions on the press unconstitutional.
On Monday, April 6, in Argentina, the scene was replicated. The Casa Rosada revoked the credentials of several accredited journalists. To justify the measure, it seized upon the publication of an investigative report—based on leaked documents—detailing alleged payments made to certain media outlets by a Russian propaganda network seeking to destabilize Javier Milei’s government. Yet, those journalists had not authored the articles in question. Just days earlier, the libertarian Chief of Cabinet of the Ministers had told one of them that he was 'merely a journalist' when asked about the judicial inquiry into illicit enrichment in which the official is currently under investigation. In less than a month, Argentine journalists went from being labeled 'merely journalists' by presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni to being branded 'traitors to the Homeland' by the President himself. From delegitimization to stigmatization.
The two scenes—Washington and Buenos Aires—unfolded in contexts where governments have turned the press into a target of systematic attacks. The difference lay not in the gesture of power, but rather in the reaction of the journalists. And that raises a series of questions for debate."
