On the night of Friday, March 1, while journalists from Télam were covering the speech of Javier Milei Before the Legislative Assembly, they once again heard a new attack by the President against the function of the state news agency created in 1945. “We are going to close the Télam agency, which has been used as a Kirchnerist propaganda agency,” stated the first president. The promise of closing public media had been one of the battlehorses of the Libertarian campaign for the presidency and in that context Milei’s statements were a new use of that argument so celebrated among his followers.
Messages and calls began among the agency’s workers to know how to react and they declared themselves to be on alert for a new attack from the Executive Branch. But Only 72 hours later the situation worsened. During the early hours of Monday the 4th, the surroundings of the Buenos Aires headquarters of Télam began to be fenced, heavily guarded by police personnel and access to workers was restricted.
During that same morning, the employees began to receive an email in their mailboxes in which they were excused from providing their work for seven days, a period that began to run from Sunday the 3rd. The institutional note was signed by the auditor Diego Chaher, but no further information was provided. The government closed Télam unexpectedly, plunging almost 800 employees into uncertainty, creating an information vacuum and making it clear that this was just the beginning of its plan to move forward with the closure of all public media.
Numbers
The state agency has a staff of 781 permanent employees according to the latest official data available, updated in January of this year. In relation to its accounts, in 2021 (latest data available) the agency had an operating deficit of 1.8 million pesos, a higher number than those reported in 2019 and 2020 ($ 1.1 million), according to the agency balance sheets. It is worth clarifying that during 2021 Télam offered its journalistic service for free “to guarantee the right to information in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.” For its part, 18 billion pesos were budgeted for the agency in 2023, according to official data. For this year they had a projected budget of 20 billionand it is precisely this figure that the ruling party shows as a reason for proceeding to its closure.
But economic indicators do not show the total reality. Télam has 803 clients, for all its services, throughout the country. Furthermore, according to the latest data provided by the agency, more than 63 thousand users interact with the cable company and 8.7 million people enter the website monthly. In fact, the portal accumulates 115 million annual impressions and nearly 3 million clicks. This results in benefits that bring the annual billing to 1,333 million pesos annuallyof which 117 thousand dollars are for export of the services that the agency provides.
But beyond the balance sheets, the importance of Télam, and the rest of the public media, is not explained only by a budgetary issue. “Télam has cardinal importance,” he says Martin Becerra, specialist in media and politics and researcher at Conicet, and highlights that, after the closure of private news agencies in the last decade, Télam’s role was even more necessary. “The only federal information connection that Argentina has in terms of a news agency is Télam. It has correspondents in the 24 provinces.
Produces information throughout the national territory. There is always talk about whether it has a biased editorial line, but there is no talk about the federal importance that this agency has and I think it is a super sensitive point to consider,” he stated. “Milei intends to close Télam against quality, plural, federal and truthful journalism, which facilitates the multiplication of media and voices throughout the country. We rebuilt it from its ruins. “Let us not tolerate such a restriction on freedom and expression,” said the last head of the agency before the arrival of La Libertad Avanza to power. Bernarda Llorente. Far from these ideas, the libertarian government celebrated the closure of Télam and even mocked the agency’s workers and those who were against its closure.
Uncertainty
In the middle of the conflict, almost 800 workers from the official agency were trapped, who not only They found out about the closure through an email sent at dawn, but they did not obtain further details about what their future will be. “It is hereby notified that all Télam SE Que personnel are exempt from providing their labor debt for a period of seven (7) days with pay starting at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, March 3 of this year. “says the brief message that bears the signature of the Mendoza lawyer Diego Chaher, appointed by Javier Milei as the agency’s auditor. But, despite official promises that there would be greater details about what will happen to their jobs, workers are surrounded by uncertainty.
“There is total silence, and the uncertainty is immense, on Monday the 11th they are supposedly going to tell us what is happening, it could be downsizing, privatization, closure, we don’t know,” commented Patricia Arrúa, Télam correspondent in Corrientes. “We are very afraid and uncertain because we don’t know what will happen to the agency,” added Ariel Díaz, another agency worker.
The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, explained on the same Monday of the closure that he would provide greater details, although that ultimately did not happen. He also did not know how to answer how the Government would proceed to close the agency without going through Congress. The legal strategy of the ruling party is based on the mega decree that Milei signed which, among other points, repeals Law 20,705 that created State companies, including Télam. But as the lawyer for the Buenos Aires Press Union, Guillermo Gianibelli, explains, “the DNU only allows Télam to be transformed from a state company to a public limited company; anything else must be done by law. “We are analyzing courses of action.”
One of the alternatives that the Government is considering and that is unofficially supported by various sectors of La Libertad Avanza is to proceed with the total closure of the agency and send the workers to a residual state entity to avoid paying compensation.
Waiting for a resolution to your conflict, some of Télam employees have turned to social networks who bring together the workers, @somostelam, and from there they continue with their professional work.
Meanwhile, the largest state news agency in Latin America, and the second largest in Spanish, saw its work cut off after more than 80 years of uninterrupted operation. Both the website and the vast news and photo archive are inaccessible. The last cable issued is precisely the one made by the workers who remained inside the newsroom early Monday morning, while the security forces surrounded the headquarters.
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