These days, it is difficult to follow the rhythm of public confrontations of Javier Milei. Ministers, governors, exalted, artists, journalists: everyone can become target of their furious tweets, seasoned with capital letters, insults and emojis. But if there is a persistent, almost structural adversary, in the presidential narrative, it is Journalism. He dedicates nicknames, teasing, accusations of corruption and operations. He does it with name and surname or through labels such as “Ensobrados”“Media hitmen” or “Mercenaries of the status quo”. The speech is not new, but systematic. And in that insistence, a strategy is revealed more than an impulsive reaction.
The communication researcher Adriana Amadoone of the most lucid voices to think about the link between media and power in Argentina was clear: “Journalism is the preferred white of power”. In the case of Milei, that preference becomes obsession. The paradoxical thing is that it attacks the media, but not to delegitimize them completely: it needs to exist to confront them. “Do not hate journalism enough,” Amado wasdto explain that although the libertarian discourse says it despises it, it continues to feed it as a relevant actor that is worth hitting.
The question is: why? Because journalism, even weakened, remains an instance of symbolic control. And Milei, like other personalist style leaders, You need to present yourself as the only legitimate actor. The journalists who question it are not only opponents, but obstacles to the redemptive crusade he says embody.
But the problem is not just from Milei. As I warn love, “We have been running that boundary between power and journalism for a long time”. Argentina does not reach the current hostility scenario without a history. Kirchnerism designed a binary logic in which the media were also part of the “Corporation” To destroywhile macrismo tried to neutralize the conflict but encouraged operations in off. Milei takes him to the extreme, but does not invey it.
In this context, the use of journalism as an internal enemy works at several levels. First, it orders politically: allows identifying the “loyal” and the “traitors”. Second, it distracts: while the newspaper covers are questioned, it is avoided to discuss poverty figures or the health crisis. And third, legitimates the closure of institutional transparency spaces.
“The suspicion harms the journalist, but in the long run it also harms power”warns loved. The permanent confrontation strategy erodes more than the relationship with the media: it undermines democratic legitimacy. In low transparency regimes, the political cost of errors or abuses is paid when it is too late. And when journalists are systematically discredited, so are the data they produce. What follows is the chaos of perceptions: Any fake news can be imposed as truth if there are no professional voices capable of contrasting it.
The other risk is the abandonment of journalism by the audiences themselves. “Trust to journalism of the poorest sectors is getting lower ”emphasize beloved. And it is not only because of the attacks of power: the concentration of media, labor precariousness, the fall of local media and disconnection with everyday problems. When journalists seem distant or functional, they lose legitimacy. And when that happens, power gains margin to impose its story without counterweight.
Amado proposes to look at the Argentine stage from a broader perspective: “When we analyze the Argentine facts, we do it from exceptionalism. We must have a global vision”. In other words: What happens here is not so different from what happens in other democracies in crisiswhere misinformation grows in the heat of the discredit of the press and polarization becomes a government method.
The worrying thing is that in the current ecosystem, the attack on journalism is not just a matter of ways: it is a state policy. In the name of freedom, the right to information is restricted. On behalf of the cultural battle, those who ask are despised. And in the name of efficiency, it is avoided. The press is not infallible, but without it, democracy loses oxygen. Who does not understand, can win an election. But it can hardly govern.
By rn
