Argentina: Journalism and Propaganda
Argentina: Journalism and Propaganda
Written by Darío Aranda, Translated by Danica Jorden
Sunday, 18 May 2014 18:50
In this column, Darío Aranda writes about a reality in which both journalism’s "official" and "opposition" lines converge. Describing two types of financial journalism, he writes: "agricultural journalists never visit the families of small farmers targeted by sprayings and evictions. Journalists on the oil industry never show their faces in the Mapuche communities, where people have heavy metals in their blood and die petroleum-related deaths. 'Desktop journalism' treats the problems of the urban middle class (which it relates to) differently to the suffering of a campesino or an indigenous person.”
Source: ComAmbiental
The big global agro-corporation announces it will launch a new soybean seed, with more agrochemicals and promising to be “more productive.” A long line of journalists repeat the corporate rhetoric and celebrate the new soy. They don’t care about the laughable approval process of transgenic crops and agrochemicals (based on studies by the same companies), nor do they mention farmers’ resulting dependence, much less notice the consequent rural evictions, clearing of native forests, or soil depletion. They like to call themselves “agrarian journalists” or, more pompously, journalists “of the countryside."
And in their image and likeness grow their little siblings, the “oil” journalists. Though they don’t describe themselves in those terms, they repeat the corporate rhetoric that calls fracking safe, parroting the words “water sources will not be affected,” while neglecting to mention the environmental disasters that these multinationals coming to Argentina have caused throughout the world. They even justified the brutal 2013 police repression in front of the provincial legislature in Neuquén [1]. A combination of malpractice and complicity.
These journalists celebrate the $5 billion payout to Repsol for the expropriation of YPF but don’t mention corporate gutting and liquidation or the enormous environmental deficit, which could radically diminish the valuation. These journalists broadcast the corporation’s voice without question, but are silent (or deceptive) about human rights violations committed against indigenous peoples. Journalists who scornfully label as “environmentalists” mothers who have been sprayed with pesticides and seen their babies die, activists who defend their place of living against mining, entire families facing eviction because of dams or forestry companies.
Coincidence I: Corporations (farming, livestock, and hydrocarbon) generously buy advertising on radio and cable programs. The ads don’t buy the editorial policies, but they do place conditions on them. Critics no longer appear as in the past, or do not appear at all.
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4850-argentina-journalism-and-propaganda