Argentina will review its funding of teleSUR, Hernan Lombardi, the media minister said Sunday. Lombardi forms part of the recenlty-elected right-wing administration of Mauricio Macri.
When teleSUR was created ten years ago, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua agreed to contribute financially or with resources, with the head offices and main support coming from Venezuela.
In an interview with La Nacion, Lombardi further stated that public media will receive a new style guide, “in order to recover the public media's objective, which has been asleep behind propaganda.”
The announcements are part of a package of measures that the new rightwing government has aimed at Argentina’s public media.
Macri’s administration, which formally took power two weeks ago, announced earlier this week that it plans to reorganize all of the country’s public media and and to fire, via decree, the Services of Audiovisual Communication (AFSCA) director Martin Sabbatella, whose term formally ends in 2017. The decision sparked strong criticism from Argentine alternative media and the package has seen significant street protests.
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On Friday, the new government also ordered the immediate suspension of the senate channel, Senado TV, until further notice – a measure that violates an existing broadcast agreement with the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino), which receives it’s web broadcast signals from the Argentine senate's TV channel, claimed Venezuela’s representative to Parlatino, Carolus Wimmer
Vice President of the World Association of Community Radios, Damian Loreti, told Pagina 12 recently that “every decision adopted by Macri's administration violates the rules of the American Convention on freedom of speech.”
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