In his lengthy career as journalist and radio host, Marcelo Longobardi has confronted all of Argentina\u2019s governments before him with a critical analysis of their policies and current affairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The morning radio programme Cada ma\u00f1ana<\/em>, which Longobardi, 63, hosted without interruption for 21 years, earned him the recognition of six Mart\u00edn Fierro prizes for his journalistic work, a Mart\u00edn Fierro de Oro, a Konex de Platino prize for his radio career and entry into the National Academy of Journalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n His incisive criticism led him to confrontations with virtually every government since the return of democracy of 1983, but he resisted the onslaughts he resisted \u2013 Kirchnerism took him off the air during transmission while last December, at the request of Javier Milei\u2019s government, he was removed from the line-up of Radio Rivadavia.\u00a0<\/p>\n Turning his focus onto the new digital formats, Longobardi will be hosting the early morning show of Radio Perfil as from next Monday (March 10) and a series of interviews on Net TV.<\/p>\n Given the recent television interview controversy featuring Milei and Jonatan Viale, there is no better time to consult him about the state of journalism in Argentina.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It ended up being confirmed that Joni Viale\u2019s interview with President [Javier] Milei was incorrect, like you said. Now, ex post facto<\/em>, what is your reflection?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve made many objections to President Milei\u2019s relationship with the professional press and have been doing so for a long time, from the [governments of the] Kirchners onward. Perhaps my reply to this issue might surprise you.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve had some very severe disagreements with Jonatan Viale, both in public and private. Viale and I are clearly not friends, we\u2019ve had our problems on the air. I decided to keep my distance from him a long time ago when we were together on Radio Rivadavia. This might seem slightly crazy but it does not seem fair for me to examine his work, given our mutual animosity.\u00a0<\/p>\n For me, it would be easy enough to come along and tear him up because that would not be very hard but I\u2019d rather not. I\u2019d prefer the people to judge that episode without my passing judgement on the issue. What I would say would be to agree with your comments a few days ago, when you demanded an apology from him. There are many things which can happen on television and which have happened to me and to everybody, but obviously not that.<\/p>\n And this is not just about Milei and Viale, whom we all know to be people with an unprofessional relationship.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019re referring to the leak, not to what happened\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n … or that it was deliberate\/ I cannot know and nor does the Viale issue interest me much but rather its context in order to understand that there are things which can happen on television but obviously not that. And I\u2019m going to be really frank with you, what would I have done if it had happened to me?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n What?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know! I have no idea.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But we have an international example in another interrupted interview.<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a very interesting example, which I strongly recall, of a friend of mine called Jorge Ramos, a star Univision journalist in the United States interviewing [Venezuelan President] Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. A very tense interview, inversely to Milei and Viale, and in its 17th minute, Jorge Ramos shows Maduro a photo of some Venezuelan children eating in the street and Maduro leaps up, interrupts the interview and seizes the Univision cameras, stopping just short of deporting Jorge and his team from Caracas.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The professional reputation of Jorge Ramos rose with that episode, while Joni Viale is suffering discredit. If he had opposed that part of the interview being edited, it would have been beneficial for him.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here you have to enter a complex subject, which is that the relationship between the Milei government and the press accompanying him is highly prostituted, part of a dramatic decline of a democratic Argentina. The fact of this happening to a person very close to President Milei complicates the debate. What if it had happened to Nelson Castro, Joaqu\u00edn Morales Sol\u00e1, Carlos Pagni, you or me? During an interview a guy suddenly comes along and tells you: \u2018Stop here, this is a mess\u2019… to tell you the truth and placing myself in Viale\u2019s position, what does one do? I don\u2019t know, chuck the guy out of the interview and tell him that I will keep recording and that he\u2019ll have to explain? Doing this, that part which was recorded would have eventually been presented as it was. Very sorry, Mr [Santiago] Caputo, this has been recorded and must go out on the air. But we have this inconvenience that the relationship is so prostituted.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It would have suited Joni Viale professionally to have done what you are saying, not what he did.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m obviously not Viale and he really does not interest me much. I don\u2019t want to judge him too much because it seems unfair to me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The point is not Viale. but the President and the system of communication in general. I remember a famous United States journalist Jack Anderson saying you have to keep your distance from your sources, even proposing not frequenting certain politicians much \u201cbecause you might find them nice and thus be unconsciously partial.\u201d Since a journalist obviously has to be in contact with the source, what would be an acceptable degree of distance?<\/strong><\/p>\n Nowadays, for professional and personal reasons, and due to my stormy career recently spending a lot of time outside this country, my distance is total, meaning total. It has happened to me, and why should I lie to you, having a relationship with a political leader, in my case with [former president Mauricio] Macri, who was a friend of mine 20 years before becoming president of Boca [Juniors], never mind the country, and the same thing happened to me with [veteran Peronist politician Daniel] Scioli. When I entered Canal 9 in the 1990s, the owners were Alejandro Romay, H\u00e9ctor P\u00e9rez P\u00edcaro and Jos\u00e9 Scioli, Daniel\u2019s dad. I knew Mauricio Macri in 1985 and Daniel Scioli in 1990, long before they became politicians, establishing relationships. The same thing happened to me with [the late F1 driver and senator Carlos] Reutemann, as I told Andy Kustnetzoff, one of my best friends, the other day and that for me was a complication, as with Macri and Scioli. In particular, in the case of Macri, who never tolerated my criticisms, which he found unbearable because he understood us to be lifelong friends. It was my destiny to praise him, comment on him, interview him and also to criticise him, often emphatically. That was a very tricky reaction for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n But allow me to return for a second to the topic of Viale. I want to underline this: I take a sideral distance from that \u2018troupe\u2019 of journalists, the militant or pro-government journalists or whatever we want to call them. And in particular in the case of Viale, I\u2019ve had a severe public controversy with him so the most prudent thing is not to give an opinion. That would seem unfair to me. Perhaps if I were conversing with him, I\u2019d tell him all that.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Before changing this particular subject, I\u2019d like to make a general reflection. Throughout your life you have managed to interview every president because your career has developed honourably.<\/strong><\/p>\n Every president except Cristina [Fern\u00e1ndez de Kirchner].<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Would it be probable that some journalists having their first access to a President \u2013 not only in the case of Joni Viale but also [Esteban] Trebucq, who listens to opera every weekend with the President \u2013 have not managed to understand this and are even dazzled, not having the prior experience of knowing several presidents and learning over the years to keep a reasonable\u00a0distance?<\/strong><\/p>\n That is possible but only part of the problem. I\u2019m observing a slightly more serious problem, I see a group of journalists intervening in the power politics which form part of the infighting, reading out on the air or on television telephone messages, I don\u2019t know how to explain it\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Collusion.<\/strong><\/p>\n A relationship…<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Excessive.<\/strong> A lot is happening here at the same time. Firstly, there is an important decline, in particular in Argentina and the United States, which are the two countries I know best in terms of professional journalism. What we are seeing in Argentina is also happening in the United States. And one might say, as they say of Chicago, \u201cthe Windy City,\u201d because it sets trends, that Argentina has also set trends. This began with the Kirchners and then with [Donald] Trump in the United States \u2013 that the independent press is an obstacle which must be eliminated.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first thing I have highlighted is a context where President Milei supposes that an activist on Twitter or a social network can replace a professional journalist. That\u2019s like saying that instead of seeing a doctor, I should ask Google what to do if I have a backache, something like that. Secondly, independently of this adverse context where it is evident that the government wants to eliminate the independent press, the fact is that I\u2019ve been thrown out of the media by both the Kirchners and Milei.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now there are differences, not between the attitudes of the Kirchners and Milei but what is happening in the press. You said in another interview: \u201cToday\u2019s press is very pro-government\u201d and when you analyse it, in three television channels and two radio stations, the main ones to cap it all, TN, La Naci\u00f3n+ and A24, Radio Mitre and Radio Rivadavia, you find more or less the same journalists rotating between each other in all five media.<\/strong><\/p>\n And fighting among themselves to see who is most pro-government, accusing each other. It\u2019s almost hilarious.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And this is new.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is new. Exactly. Cribbing from my notes, I will now offer you a slightly more sophisticated explanation, which I think you deserve.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Beforehand it was encapsulated in a single television programme 6, 7, 8<\/em> [and later C5N].<\/strong><\/p>\n Now it\u2019s more expanded, exactly.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But now it\u2019s the professional press.<\/strong><\/p>\n Exactly. And I believe that is what Mile is finally aspiring towards. I don\u2019t think it bothers Milei too much what Gustavo Sylvestre or C5N, or Jorge Rial, who has now also adopted a political stance of confronting Milei, all have to say. This game of a pro-government and an opposition press suits Milei fine, it\u2019s part of his business.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Not simply confronting Milei, but in favour of Cristina [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner.<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem here is Hugo Alconada Mon, Carlos Pagni, Joaqu\u00edn Morales Sol\u00e1 or you. If you permit me some advice, you should follow Hugo Alconada Mon in the issue of cryptocurrency, it\u2019s crucial what Hugo is writing, it seems a revelation to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n I return to the issue of the press. So there is a general context in Argentina and the United States of a professional press in decline. There is a drive by President Milei to remove anything in the way, just like Cristina [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner. I don\u2019t see much difference. There is, in particular, at the moment a group of journalists flirting with the powers that be, something I don\u2019t like. I understand journalism as something different..<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s explain to readers the relationship with the source and the reasonable degree of proximity and distance between a journalist and the source. A journalist has to have contact with sources, even with those he might despise as well as like. But what we have here is another magnitude. Also as a result of the fragmented audiences, if the President grants interviews to only two or three people, those journalists come to have as their capital the audience of those who follow the President, thus permitting them to be \u201cself-employed\u201das being able to be contracted by a television audience for the mere fact of having interviews with the President.<\/strong><\/p>\n In this case Milei\u2019s conduct with certain journalists is practically identical to the Kirchners, above all Cristina. N\u00e9stor Kirchner managed to give me two interviews, obviously horrible and hostile with mistreatment. Once he stalked out slamming the door at his Casa Rosada office when I went to interview him for Radio 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as from Cristina [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner, the politicians started talking to the journalists who somehow eased their situation. A pity for them because we\u2019ve finally arrived at a point where nobody believes either the President or the journalists. That’s obviously silly.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re lacking press conferences, like in the United States where President Trump has thrown out those journalists asking him uncomfortable questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n Jorge Ramos was pushed out. Exactly.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Is it a vital part of the democratic system for presidents to grant regular press conferences?<\/strong><\/p>\n And above all, over such a delicate issue. Cryptocurrency is a very opaque and delicate issue deserving an explanation, not just to his buddy Jonatan Viale but to the press in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is one of Milei\u2019s great contradictions, supposing that the press no longer exists or is no longer important. We have no right to an opinion. That is what not only the President is saying but also his journalistic pals: Since when can you have an opinion, what makes you think you can convey a point of view? Now opinion belongs to the people. I\u2019m not saying that people should not give their opinion, of course, they do so via the social networks but that is not journalism, that\u2019s public discussion, which is all very well and fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both the President and his journalist friends are proposing that the press should have importance in democratic life and at the same time the same President picks out five journalists to keep informed and to whom to give interviews. That\u2019s difficult to understand, very contradictory.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Let me share with readers a crucial issue about which we are talking: the degree of relationship between the sources and the journalists, which was a process in crescendo starting with Kirchnerism. The first thing Kirchnerism did was to prohibit its ministers and its leading figures from going to certain media.<\/strong><\/p>\n Today the same thing is going on.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Immediately afterwards they could only go to friendly media, for example only to C5N, or to P\u00e1gina\/12<\/em>, which thus had a guaranteed audience among those voting for that party and its candidates with Cristina [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner and her main leaders going only there. This is a phenomenon of the fragmentation of audiences. The fact that M\u00e1ximo Kirchner only gave interviews to El Destape<\/em>, for example, made those interested in the opinion of those leaders consume those media. In fact, new media were created on the basis of having exclusive interviews with those people. Catering to that person at the same time guarantees the audience of those who vote for that person. Do you find there the red thread of a secondary effect produced by technology of fragmenting audiences, creating channels like Fox in the United States which follow an exclusive agenda with exclusive interviews with certain personalities?<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally returning to the Viale episode \u2013 independently of his behaviour facing a problem which I admit to be complex as to whether or not there was what we are going to call a conspiracy to broadcast an interview \u2013 we are in the presence of much deeper issues than that. We have a President who does not believe in freedom of expression. Now we are going to look at the President in a context where I see very serious problems in the press and its relationships with governments, especially in the cases of Argentina and the United States, and the relationship of the press with their audiences. And I believe that Argentina has been a precursor here with the Kirchners. The relationship with the press and media began to grow complicated with the government’s argument that the press was acting politically.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Journalism at war, on the one side, militant journalism on the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n Exactly. News is in the final analysis an invention of [Grupo Clar\u00edn CEO H\u00e9ctor] Magnetto, in whose book I wrote the prologue revealing there a phrase Kirchner told me: \u201cThere would not have been a countryside without [Grupo] Clar\u00edn.\u201d How delirious can you get? Kirchner believed that the rebellion of the farmers \u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n … was created by TN [television news channel].<\/strong><\/p>\n It was all [Grupo] Clar\u00edn\u2019s fault. An extraordinary definition to understand how [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner saw information. There and then began a very serious problem because the governments began to present the press as part of politics, as if news could not be disinterested. If you have an opinion, as Milei says, you must be on the take or have vested interests. [Fern\u00e1ndez de] Kirchner told a radio reporter: \u201cI know who sent you to ask that question.\u201d That\u2019s when the relationship began to be prostituted. Until then it had not even happened under [late former president Carlos] Menem \u2013 i.e we had a more or less reasonable relationship between the professional media and government.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In 2007 the first smartphone came along: iPhone 1. The crisis with the farmers came practically without telephones to transmit images in motion. There was only Nextel, where one could write a text. Telephones were not film cameras transmitting audio-visual images. La Naci\u00f3n+ did not exist, C5N was controlled by the government with programmes being lifted the moment the government ordered, even when being broadcast live.<\/strong><\/p>\n They took me off the air when broadcasting live, not once but twice. The other time was not noticed but I\u2019ll tell you about it now. I believe it was a Saturday afternoon when farmers were demonstrating in Plaza de Mayo and there was a confrontation with [union and social Luis] D\u2019El\u00eda and [government official Guillermo] Moreno, so they also took me off the air. I was on a panel, N\u00e9stor Kirchner called cursing and I ended up the next day with an allergic outbreak of stress attended by your friend [Dr.] N\u00e9stor Wainsztein.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The doctor we have in common.<\/strong><\/p>\n And a great one.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The only audiovisual medium of those times which N\u00e9stor Kirchner did not control was TN. He was guaranteed against it coming out in the C5N of [Daniel Haddad?] or Cr\u00f3nica<\/em> while neither La Naci\u00f3n+ nor smartphones existed and A24 practically did not. That marks the total difference in communications in the last 17 years.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is where, it seems to me, the phenomenon begins whereby governments habitually start to leapfrog the obstacles presented by the press to pigeonhole themselves as people with political or business interests. I believe militant journalism to \u00a0be a derivation of that, which is how it happened in the vision of governments, above all Kirchnerism.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And now pro-government journalism. What is the difference between militant and pro-government?<\/strong><\/p>\n We come back to the same and here I\u2019ve noted a series of questions which begin to complicate the picture. This is where bias starts.There is a book which I believe to be more current than ever, La noticia deseada<\/em> by Miguel Wi\u00f1azki.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Our mutual friend Miguel.<\/strong> It seems to me that the language of the social networks is starting to infect journalism. Today a formal television journalist talks like an anonymous X user. I cannot understand that. We are not anonymous X users, we are formal journalists. People say whatever comes into their heads but that does not mean we should tweet on television. There is a sequence starting with a controversy between the governments and the press where the governments accuse the press of acting politically. Militant journalism thus begins, we shut ourselves up inside algorithms confirming our biases and disconnecting us from anybody who does not think the way we do.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is an important worldwide slump in private advertising in the media while investment funds have entered the media worldwide and in Argentina. The relationship which a Wall Street investment fund and a news item might have would be the same as between me and Jupiter. Imagine this scene. A Washington Post<\/em> journalist comes along and tells Jeff Bezos, its new owner: \u201cMr Bezos, I have the new Pentagon Papers\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ve just discovered a new Watergate.\u201d Would that be published or not? It would not be published. So the investment funds and the investors in the media with no connection to this profession end up prostituting that profession.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Production:<\/strong> Sol Bacigalupo<\/em><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s not clear to me and you know very well that there is a debate within our profession as to whether what happened was the product of chance, as can happen, or the product of some kind of \u2026<\/p>\n
\nYes. It also happened under Kirchnerism, of course. It\u2019s not even new. I have a very different concept of journalism: the greater the distance, the better. Today when I see a politician, I look the other way, I don\u2019t want to know anything. I work in public \u2013 my radio interviews are when I\u2019m working at the radio, as I will continue to do in our new job, on which we\u2019ll comment later. But I try to avoid personal relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nThe President should have given a press conference on the cryptocurrency issue and if he didn\u2019t, I have to presume that he has something to hide. Somebody is advising Milei very badly. I don\u2019t want to get involved, let him do what he wants, it doesn\u2019t interest \u00a0me.<\/p>\n
\nA book far more valid today than when Miguel wrote it. People began to want to listen only to what ratifies their biased point of view and add to that the algorithms which trap us inside all the bubbles out of which we look. I have my own totally biased YouTube which I sometimes deliberately deceive so that it shows me other things but finally we all end up trapped inside bubbles disconnected from each other. I only watch Jaime Bayly, you, Carlos Pagni, Tiger Woods at his best and the last races of Reutemann, never showing me anybody who does not think the way I do. So that’s a problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n