“Qué Te Pasa, Clarin” Goes Online

For those of you who follow local politics and media, the speculation that the Kirchners and Clarín, Argentina’s leading newspaper, are in an all out battle will come as no surprise. The truth is they are, something confirmed by multiple sources both at Clarín and in the government.

A great deal of power, influence and money is at stake. Clarín isn’t merely a newspaper. Grupo Clarín is a massive multimedia conglomerate that owns radio (Radio Mitre) and television stations (TN & Canal 13), newspapers, and broadband distribution companies like Fibertel, Cablevision, and Multicanal.

Naturally, the company is interested in maintaining its position as a dominant media company. The Kirchners, meanwhile, are naturally interested in maintaining their dominant position on the nation’s political stage. These two ambitions became mutually exclusive quite some time ago.

They reached a boiling point last year when Argentine farmers rebelled against the Kirchners’ tax policies and began a debilitating national strike that weakened the economy, halted the supply of food products and cut off virtually all farm exports for nearly four months.

Polls last year showed that, for the most part, Argentines sided with the farmers, believing that, among other things, the government was not giving them a fair deal and was obstinately opposed to changing its tax policies. The conflict, and the belief that the government was responsible for it, led President Cristina Fernández’s approval ratings to plummet to a record low of 20%, a nadir from which they have never completely recovered. (Her approval rating now hovers around 29%)

Clarín’s relationship with the Kirchners had always been rocky, but for years critics accused the newspaper of siding blindly with the Kirchners, even when journalistic prudence prescribed a more skeptical approach. But all of that changed with the farm conflict and Clarín’s coverage of it.

Clarín, people at the newspaper say, had no choice but to take on the Kirchners in their battle against the farmers because a decision not to do so would have been tantamount to taking on Argentina’s middle class, which at once despised the conflict and paid for Clarín’s bills.

This assessment may or may not be accurate, but what is clear is that the Kirchners were highly displeased by the coverage they received in the paper. Since then things have only worsened.

Last month Clarín, in its coverage of a provincial election in Catamarca, reported that Néstor Kirchner had suffered a major defeat because a Kirchner-backed candidate lost an election in the province.

Kirchner was furious. He repeatedly bashed the newspaper for being biased and incomplete in its coverage. (A video of the former president lambasting Clarín can be seen here.)

“Qué te pasa, Clarín!” Kirchner shouted repeatedly.

But the government plans to get its revenge through the passage of a new multimedia law which, among many other things, would carve Clarín’s media empire up into pieces.

I won’t further explore the media law or the battle between Clarín and the Kirchners here, but for those who are interested in following the fray, a new website has been launched, by a Kirchnerista, I presume, that tracks Clarín’s alleged abuses. You can see it here. Its title: Qué Te Pasa, Clarin!

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