On Sunday, April 27, the host Luciana Geuna opened his program And now what? by TN with an editorial that dismantled point by point the official accusation of “illegal espionage.” The Military House had filed a criminal complaint against Geuna and Ignacio Salerno by a report issued weeks before, in which images of the common use hallways of the Casa Rosada were shown. As a consequence, the government of Javier Milei took an unprecedented measure: the Thursday, April 23, the press room closed and withdrew the accreditations of all journalists covering the building. For the first time in Argentine history, the Casa Rosada was closed to the media.
The permission that the Government ignored
Geuna’s first rebuttal went to the heart of the official story. The driver explained that the report had been her idea: she wanted the Salerno23 years old and with two years of accreditation at La Rosada, will tell the internal politics of the government in a more visual way, “relating it from the common hallways.” His description of the project was eloquent: “It was a pretty innocent report.”.
But the central data is different. “Naturally, we notified press officials in advance that we would do so”Geuna stated. That statement, if it is accurate—and the Government did not publicly deny it—empties the qualification of “clandestine recording” of any legal basis. There can be no secrecy where there was prior notification to the local authorities themselves.
Geuna’s second argument was as simple as it was forceful: the images that his team recorded correspond to areas accessible on Google Street View and replicated “by thousands” on social networks, when visitors or students tour the Casa Rosada with their cell phones. “Nothing was shown that had not been publicly reproduced before”he stressed.
However, the official accusation went the opposite way. The Military House He argued before the Court that the content violated the security of the facilities and exposed “strategic data of the Executive Branch,” citing surveillance systems, communication equipment and access control devices that had to be kept under wraps. The complaint was left in the hands of the judge Ariel Lijo in Comodoro Py, with charges linked to the disclosure of political and military secrets and possible crimes against national security.
The distance between what Geuna described and what the Government alleged is, to say the least, striking.
