Argentine President Javier Milei has criticized the measure that led to the suspension of the social network X in Brazil.
This past week, at an event in Buenos Aires, he said that social media is the public arena “where Brazilians can raise their voices and express their differences”, and that “only a tyrant, who is wrong about everything, can approve such an act of oppression”.
What is surprising, however, is that in Argentina the ultra-liberal leader is adopting an increasingly authoritarian position with regard to freedom of expression.
Milei has just issued a decree prohibiting access to information about the State and its employees. The measure affects legislation used not only by journalists, but by any citizen who wants to follow aspects of management or data on the assets of high-ranking officials.
Seen as unconstitutional by the opposition, the decision must be taken to court, but it is yet another sign of the pressure that Milei has exerted on the media.
Throughout the week, in an interview with one of the only three journalists who, openly in favor of Milei’s administration, the president speaks to periodically, he stated that “freedom of expression only survives today on social networks” and that these have ended the “monopoly of the microphone” and the “envelope” system — a method used mainly by former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) to give certain journalists irregular money from the State so that they would maintain a position favorable to the government.
Out There
Milei also proposed that journalists should be considered “politically exposed persons”, meaning that information about their assets should also be made available to public consultation, “so that they can be subjected to public scorn”.
These statements represent serious constraints on the media. According to Fopea (Argentine Journalism Forum), today more than 40% of attacks on freedom of expression are committed by the Executive Branch.
The Presidency has limited the space of the daily press conferences that it gives through its spokesman, Manuel Adorni, in the Casa Rosada, to journalists who pass an ideological sieve. “We only want those professionals here who feel proud to be in the government house,” said Adorni.
Milei had been irritated by the use of the public information law mechanism by journalists who questioned who entered and left the Olivos residence, from where the president governs, as he practically does not visit the Casa Rosada.
He was enraged, for example, by the repeated inquiries about the cost that the construction of a huge kennel for his dogs had on the public coffers, and by the money spent on his international trips — most of them full of the leader’s private agendas, such as meetings with politicians and businessmen aligned with them.
Among the queries that irritated the government were the one that revealed that the Central Bank would be sending gold bars from its reserves abroad without revealing their destination and the one that questioned a US$100 million increase in the budget of the intelligence service (Side) in a scenario in which the entire public administration has been undergoing adjustments and layoffs.
The gestures, which make the work of the press difficult, are authoritarian for a government that presents itself as liberal.
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