Javier Milei has left Télam, Argentina's state news agency, in limbo. The president announced on Friday that he was shutting it down because he saw it as an opposition propaganda tool and the threat began to take shape in the early hours of Monday. Police barricaded the front door of the agency's two buildings around the same time that workers received an email exempting them from work for a week. The website also stopped working. Since then, “Page under renovation” can be read on the digital cover and replaces the news that appeared on it.
With 755 employees, Télam is the largest state news agency in Latin America and the second largest in Spain after Spain's Efe. The company produces nearly 500 cables and 200 photos, as well as video, radio and social media content every day.
Many of his employees, still confused by the immediate future, took part this Monday in a symbolic hug in front of the doors of the media headquarters. “We defend Télam” and “Télam will not close” were written on the banners held by journalists, photographers and union members to express their support. “The national government is carrying out one of the worst attacks on freedom of expression in the last 40 years of democracy,” denounced the workers’ assembly.
The official version differs. In his opening speech to the regular sessions of Congress on March 1, the Argentine president ordered Télam to be closed because “it has been used as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency in recent decades.” His spokesman Manuel Adorni added this Monday that the decision was limited to the fulfillment of an election promise and “has nothing to do with information or media pluralism or with questions of freedom of expression.”
Adorni also cited economic reasons, stating that Télam had accumulated losses of 20,000 million pesos (about $24 million at the official exchange rate) this year. He expected that the government's plan to close the company “and the fate of its workers” would be announced in the coming days.
The agency, like the other public media, has been subject to intervention since February with the aim of “changing its organic and functional structure”. On March 1, in his opening speech to the regular sessions of Congress, Milei went a step further and expected the closure of Télam. His argument is that he “has been misused as a propaganda agency for the Kirchnerists in recent decades.”
Auditor Diego Chaher visited the agency's facilities hours before the presidential embassy and, according to workers, was pleasantly surprised. “Now we don’t know if it was actually a visit to identify the agency’s assets and assess what could be sold,” says one of the journalists who were present on Chaher’s tour. Employees fear that these seven days of vacation could be an excuse to empty Télam and discuss whether they should camp outside the door to prevent this.
Argentina's state news agency was founded in 1945 at the request of the then Minister of Labor and Social Security, Juan Domingo Perón. Over the course of its 78-year history, there have been failed attempts at closure and massive layoffs. The most recent conflict occurred in 2018, when Mauricio Macri's government laid off 40% of the Télam workforce. The judge soon ordered the reinstatement of most of those fired.