Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Hope for Unbiased Placement of Official Advertising

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 13 2007 (IPS) - Civil society organisations in Argentina are urging Congress to establish clear guidelines for the transparent allocation and oversight of public advertising, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling against the arbitrary placement of ads by a provincial government.

Parliamentary Deputy Pedro Moroni, the chairman of the Freedom of Expression Committee in the lower house of Congress, said that in August, 10 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had been called on to express their points of view on the issue.

“The idea is to listen to the recommendations, which generally coincide, analyse the proposed draft laws that have been drawn up, and bring them together in one single initiative,” Moroni, of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) opposition party, told IPS.

He admitted, however, that it is unlikely that the representatives of the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party will throw their support behind the initiative during the campaign for the Oct. 28 elections.

But he said he hopes the recent Supreme Court decision that found the government of the southwestern province of Neuquén guilty of discriminating against a newspaper from the neighbouring Río Negro province will help accelerate progress towards a future bill.

The Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 7 that authorities “cannot manipulate advertising, allocating and withdrawing it from media outlets based on bias.”


The case was initially brought by the Río Negro daily, the leading newspaper in that province and in Neuquén, against right-wing Governor Jorge Sobisch of Neuquén, after he yanked the advertising that had been regularly allocated to the paper since 2002.

The newspaper’s managers accused the provincial government of cancelling the ads in reprisal for reports on an alleged bribe to get the provincial Congress to approve the Sobisch administration’s proposed candidates for magistrates.

The verdict pointed to a legal vacuum in Argentina. Magistrate Carlos Fayt said officials are able to “discriminate” when it comes to public advertising “because of the lack of rules setting guidelines for selection” of media outlets in which to publish ads.

Although the Supreme Court decision noted that there is no law requiring the government to allocate advertising to all media outlets, it added that it is illegal to use official advertising as an indirect means of affecting freedom of speech.

The sentence was welcomed by international and local NGOs that have complained for years of arbitrary and biased placement of public advertising at the provincial and national levels, and have been calling for a new law that would establish rules for the distribution of ads.

The Association for Civil Rights (ADC), the Citizen Power Foundation (Fundación Poder Ciudadano) and the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) were pleased with the ruling, although they said the next step is to pass a new law.

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA/SIP), which represents more than 1,300 newspapers in the region, also welcomed the verdict, and urged “lawmakers in the region to legislate for transparency, technical criteria, plurality and diversity in handling public funds for placement of official ads”.

The ruling “should be seen as a major legal precedent to be copied in those countries where such a habitual and corrupt practice is completely contrary to freedom of the press,” the organisation added.

In its communiqué, IAPA/SIP said that so far this year, it has “spoken out against discrimination in the placement of official advertising in Aruba, Guyana, Uruguay, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela.” And in Argentina, it said, the problem is a long-standing one at the level of both the national and provincial governments.

Pablo Secchi of the Citizen Power Foundation told IPS that his organisation submitted a report to the congressional Freedom of Expression Committee in August, making it clear that the group believes public advertising must not be used to reward or punish a media outlet’s editorial line.

The Foundation recommended the creation of an independent technical body to coordinate the placement of official advertising and oversee the use of the budget assigned to publicise government works and to publish items like calls for bids or for applicants, schedules for payments of wages or pensions, judicial information, and the results of provincial lotteries.

Since 2003, the Foundation has monitored the advertising expenses of the government of President Néstor Kirchner, which, the group states, has expanded “alarmingly” this year.

Journalist María O’Donnell agrees. In her book, “Propaganda K”, published this month, the reporter stated that official advertising spending climbed from just over 15 million dollars in 2003, the year that Kirchner took power, to a projected 83 million dollars for this year.

O’Donnell estimates that the advertising administered by the central government and state bodies like the Banco de la Nación and the National Lottery accounts for 10 percent of all advertising in Argentina.

The ADC maintains that the arbitrary placement of public advertising has driven several print media outlets to the verge of closure, especially in provinces like Salta or San Luis, where they are forced to compete with the leading papers, which belong to local authorities themselves.

The magazines Perfil and Noticias, outspoken critics of the Kirchner administration, also complained that they had suffered the withdrawal of public advertising.

But the Secretariat of the Media, which manages the national government’s advertising funds, defended the decisions, describing the magazines as “sensationalist” and “extortionist.”

Prior to this month’s Supreme Court verdict, Attorney General Esteban Righi stated that the biased distribution of public advertising had emerged “as a new category of censorship of freedom of speech.”

Citing recommendations from the Organisation of American States (OAS) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, the attorney general called for the creation of mechanisms to establish guidelines for the allocation of advertising.

The lack of rules allows the government to act with “excessive discretion” in the placement of advertising, he said. Righi disagreed, however, with the Supreme Court ruling because there is no legislation on the question. The dissenting magistrates in the Río Negro case used the same argument.

But the majority of the magistrates on the Supreme Court panel that heard the case ruled that the government of Neuquén must present a plan for the unbiased distribution of advertising.

The verdict also states that the legislature should draw up guidelines.

Gastón Chillier, the executive director of CELS, a local human rights group, applauded the Supreme Court decision and said indirect sanctions taken to silence reporters or squelch criticism “are incompatible with freedom of speech.”

He also said that “to prevent it from becoming a tool of pressure used to reward or punish the press, there should be legislation that clearly defines the criteria to be followed in the allocation of official advertising.”

These guidelines, according to the Citizen Power Foundation, could be based on “a combination of the content of the government’s message and the audience to which it is directed, besides other criteria like the most competitive costs” offered by newspapers.

 
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