Despite Gov’t Condemnation, Clarín Remains No. 1

Despite continuous condemnation from President Cristina Fernández’s administration, the newspaper Clarín continues to dominate Argentina’s print media market, according to the latest data from the Circulation Verification Institute, or  IVC. In April Clarín sold an average of 353,553 papers a day, easily making it the country’s No. 1 newspaper.

That puts Clarín well ahead of La Nación, which sold just 153,226 papers on average per day in April. La Nación’s average Sunday edition sales rose to 249,667 but that wasn’t enough to catch Clarín whose Sunday sales averaged 709,501 editions.

Of Argentina’s major paid newspapers, only Clarín, La Nación and Diario Popular (87,588 editions) submit their data to analysis by the IVC. This makes it harder to verify sales claims made by other papers such as El Cronista, Crítica or Página 12, which all have lower circulation levels.

As Argentina’s leading paper, one would expect Clarín to get far more advertising money than other papers. Precise private sector advertising data aren’t available for comparison, but there are plenty of data for government-sponsored advertising.

That data, published by the public sector watchdog group Poder Ciudadano, indicate President Fernandez has a clear preference for Página 12 over all others. Last year her administration gave 29.3 million pesos ($7.8 million) to the much lesser-read, left-leaning paper. Clarín actually received less, getting 27 million pesos while La Nación got 12.3 million.

Néstor Kirchner, former president and husband to Fernández, has hailed Página 12 and its articles on numerous occasions. Last week he called at least three times on Argentines to read a story in the paper that , Kirchner indicated, scandalously linked Francisco de Narvaez, Kirchner’s chief political rival in this month’s congressional election, to a court case involving the illegal sale of ephedrine.

The Página 12 story cited an email allegedly sent from De Narvaez to Carlos Pagni, a columnist for La Nación, in which De Narvaez downplayed the political significance of the ephedrine issue and said he would seek to recuse the judge overseeing the case. The email, which Página 12 said was sent anonymously to the judge and to various media and political figures, is widely thought to have been snagged by Argentina’s secret intelligence agency, the SIDE, which is controlled by the Kirchners. Journalists, leading business executives and opposition politicians often take it for granted that their phones and email accounts are tapped by the SIDE. Usually, sensitive or potentially controversial information is delivered in person to avoid unwanted “filtration.”

Reliable circulation data for Pagina 12 are hard to come by, but assuming its average circulation is just a fraction of Clarin’s, one would presume its government advertising revenue would be insignificant compared with Clarín’s.

Whatever the case, the Kirchners clearly are engaged in an ongoing battle with the nation’s top newspaper, and are forced to give it advertising money not because of a personal predilection for its journalistic integrity, which they routinely question, but because it’s one of the easiest ways for them to get their point of view into the public domain.

In a freedom of speech case earlier this year, a federal court ruled that the government was unacceptably discriminatory in the way it distributes advertising money. The case involved the publishing company Editorial Perfil, whose publications (including the magazine Noticias) received no government publicity. The court ruled that this “unequal treatment … supposes an evident violation of the principle of freedom of speech, which should be repaired immediately.”

Popularity: 15% [?]