March 4, 2024
Télam workers at a protest. “Defending public media is defending national sovereignty”.
On the morning of March 4, the website of the national news agency, Télam, was shut down and inaccessible to workers with a notice that indicated “page under reconstruction.” The offices of Télam were also fenced off and with a security operation to ensure that no one is able to enter. The move came days after Argentine President Javier Milei announced it during his speech for the opening of ordinary sessions of the National Congress on March 1.
In the speech Milei gave last Friday, he assured that Télam “has been used in recent decades as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency”, a similar argument that the former Secretary of Public Media, Hernán Lombardi, had made when in 2018 ,357 layoffs were ordered in the agency, many of them later reversed by Justice.
In response to the attack on press freedom, Télam workers have called for a rally on Monday March 4 to defend the news agency and its workers.
“The national government is carrying out one of the worst attacks on freedom of expression in the last 40 years of democracy,” Télam workers expressed on social networks.
“Tonight, the city police fenced off the two buildings of the National News and Advertising Agency Télam, to avoid the massive [rally] and prevent workers from accessing the building,” denounced the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA).
Télam workers, trade union leaders and members from SiPreBA as well as from the major trade union confederations, CGT, CTA-A, and CTA-T, are expected to participate in the rally in defense of Télam which was called after the president’s announcement of the closure last Friday. The latest developments have given further impetus to the action.
The Télam Agency was founded in 1945 during the government of Juan Domingo Perón to seek sovereignty in information and in more than 70 years of experience it became one of the most important news cable companies on the continent.
Source: ARG Medios