A leaked audio caused a media tremor: in the recording, Leonor Schwadron, Jonatan Viale’s mother, appears addressing the president of the Argentine Football Association (AFA), Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, asking him to return an advertising advertisement that had been withdrawn. He assures that “they have nothing to do with what Jonatan says” and calls for the organization’s funding to be restored.
The audio leak is not an isolated episode: it follows open tension between communicators. Jorge Rial publicly attacked Joni Viale for the controversial link with the “Chiqui” Tapia guideline. Rial questioned whether the publicity of the involved environments has as a counterpart media criticism of football and AFA officials, with specific complaints about the CEAMSE publicity.
The episode reveals a mix of media, politics, power and personal relationships. That Viale’s mother directly demands a financial favor from Tapia along with Rial’s complaint about “media operations” against the AFA places the journalist in a double dimension: on the one hand, the journalist who criticizes the system; on the other hand, the indirect member of a claim that is connected to the same system that is accused.
The controversy takes the form of questioning the coherence between what is proclaimed and what is practiced. Viale’s reported link with a withdrawn advertisement and then personal claims to Tapia opens the question – in fact, expressed by Rial – about journalistic independence in the media sections that cross the State, football and official advertising.
In essence, the leak of the audio and Rial’s intervention expose a broader battle: the dispute for control of the “public voice”, for who defines what is communicated and who wins by doing so or by denouncing it. And on that board, Joni Viale appears as an actor and object at the same time, trapped between his critical role and the claim that emerges from his family environment.
The journalist denied the charges.
