For Argentine publisher and journalist Jorge Fontevecchia, many activists who support President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – those aligned with so-called kirchnerismo – are prone to distorting the truth due to a mix of ideology and resentment. “[T]hey always aspired for notoriety, transcendence, influence, or the visibility that the big media has, [and] never got it and… kirchnerismo heals their frustration,” Fontevecchia controversially writes in his column for Perfil. Fontevecchia is the founder and editor of the newspaper.
According to the journalist: “Hyperconservative Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News uses – to attack Obama and American liberals – the same techniques that the Argentine public television program 6, 7, 8 uses to punish the critics of kirchnerismo.”
This column comes at a time of tense conflict between the president and the main media outlets, whose editorial lines oppose her administration.
“You can lie while telling the truth,” Fontevecchia writes, “simply being dishonest in using journalism techniques to dig up the minimum from the confusing reality with the goal of making the false seem true.”
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
