By Ingrid Bachmann
Keeping with recent trends, the federal government increased its spending on advertising from $100 million in 2008 to $210 million in 2009, a pivotal election year for the ruling party, La Nación reports.
The government's decision to publish the figures came after a month of refusing to heed requests for the information, prompting an NGO to seek a court order based on public information access rules.
According to La Nácion—a paper that has been critical of the current government—several groups working for transparency were alarmed that the majority of spending took place in the first half of the year, right before the June legislative elections.
The advertising data is available to the public on this government website (Spanish).
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.
