By Ingrid Bachmann
“It is important to nationalize the media,” President Cristina Fernández said, highlighting the media's importance in “defending the interests of the country,” Télam and Página 12 report.
While the term usually connotes a takeover of media production by the state, the president insisted she meant otherwise. According to EFE, she wants the media to “acquire a national conscience.” Fernández said the Argentine press is dedicated to emphasizing the country’s problems, while with previous administrations the media hid and ignored corruption “and were many times complicit in the politics of surrender and subordination.”
The Fernández government continues to have a tense relationship with private media outlets. The conflict includes the management of Papel Prensa, the nation’s largest newsprint company that is formally owned by the government and the two newspapers Clarín and La Nación.
Recently, Fernández said that she would send Congress a new bill to regulate the production and sale of newsprint to papers and magazines, La Gaceta de Tucumán reports. At the announcement, the president accused Clarín and La Nación of turning “all Argentines” into “hostages” for their work at the print company, Prefil adds.
The proposed bill runs parallel to another that passed committee in the Chamber of Deputies this week, which would classify the production of newsprint as a “public utility,” ANSA explains.
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.
