La Nacion

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 11:24pm on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

In Argentina, the government of President Cristina Kirchner is attacking free speech and the free press, Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote in the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2009:

"From his earliest days as president, Mr. Kirchner tried to keep media critics quiet by using the government's publicity budget to reward supporters and starve those outlets that dared to print criticism. It was an effective tool in an economy on life support, where advertising had dried up.

As the economy recovered, this strategy began to cost more. In 2008 the government spent $100 million in "advertising" in the media, an eight-fold increase since 2003. It directs its business to news outlets with a supportive editorial line.

Yet independent voices remain, like that of the influential national newspaper, La Nación (which publishes some Wall Street Journal content). This obviously troubles the Kirchners. So the government has taken out the sledge hammer. The director of the secretariat of state intelligence (S.I.) has filed two criminal actions against Bartolomé Mitre, the director of the paper, and Julio Saguier, the president of the corporation that owns it.

They are charged with slander for publishing two editorials that question the political activities of the secretive intelligence agency and its director. Somehow both cases have landed with the same judge -- though the odds of that are remote -- and he has allowed the cases to go forward even though the Supreme Court ruled last year that opinions criticizing public officers cannot be grounds for civil or criminal actions. Press critics have questioned whether the two can get a fair trial. If found guilty in both cases, the accused could get three years in prison."

The full story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124502150880513761.html