New York – The Committee to Protect Journalists has asked Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to explain the cancellation of two ostensibly independent programs on his country’s state-run media.
In a letter released Thursday, the New York-based CPJ raised concerns about the July 8 decision by Channel 7 television to cancel the weekly news program “Desayuno,” hosted by independent journalist Victor Hugo Morales.
According to CPJ, the station’s content coordinator, Nestor Piccone, “told Morales that the show was canceled because the station wanted to control the editorial line of its programming.”
“Morales has covered issues sensitive to your government,” the group said in its missive to Kirchner, citing Argentina’s long-running spat with Uruguay over the latter’s plans to build paper mills on the river that forms the two nations’ shared border.
The CPJ went on to renew its expression of concern about the cancellation in January of a program on state-run Radio Nacional hosted by journalist Jose “Pepe” Eliaschev, whom the group identified as a critic of Argentine government policies.
The committee complained of having received no response to its months-ago request to Buenos Aires for information on the episode, in which Eliaschev claimed that his ouster from Radio Nacional was an instance of censorship.
“These two cases take place amid Argentine officials’ increasing intolerance of criticism in the media,” CPJ said in its letter to Kirchner.
It also reminded the president that by law, the primary function of his country’s public media is to “ensure the Argentine people the right to plural, impartial, and truthful information.”
