Argentina ups the ante in battle with Clarín media group

An ongoing battle between Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the publishing group Clarín, which owns the country's largest daily, has reached new dimensions these past weeks after the government ordered owners to divest some of its holdings by December. Non-compliance will lead to a public auction, the government has threatened.

The announcement was made in television spots broadcast during breaks in widely watched soccer matches over the September 22-23 weekend. The commercials start off with an announcer saying: "We want you to mark a very important day on your calendars: December 7. Or better, let's call it 7-D - the 'D' is for December but it could also mean diversity and democracy."

The announcer goes on to say that if the Clarín Group doesn't comply with the 2009 Media Law, "the government will be obliged to hold a public bid" to "sell off licenses that exceed the maximum authorized under the law." The deadline for Clarín to do so is December 7.

Clarín Group is the largest media company in Argentina, with vast holdings in free-to-air television stations and AM and FM radio outlets - most with the biggest audience share - as well as the major daily Clarín, which has been a stern critic of Fernández de Kirchner's government.

The government "engages in near-constant attacks on Clarín"

In a Washington Post opinion piece published Monday, Clarín director Jorge Rendo said that the president and her allies "engage in near-constant attacks on Clarín, its shareholders and its reporters." Rendo explains that Clarín, according to the media law, cannot be "immediately stripped of its offending assets" until all its legal appeals have been exhausted. The Argentinean Supreme Court ruled against Clarín in May but it still has not made a decision on whether the publisher's constitutional rights are being violated.

"The Argentine government has increasingly used its political and economic clout to favor its allies and harass its opponents, including independent economists who dare to publish the country's true economic statistics rather than those doctored by the state," he wrote.

Under the law, media conglomerates can only hold a maximum of 24 cable-television licenses and 10 broadcast radio and television licenses. Clarín has 240 cable networks, 10 radio and four broadcast TV licenses, according to the government.

Until 2008, Clarín's relationship with the president and her predecessor and late husband, Néstor Kirchner, was good. But the latter that year accused the newspaper of siding with farmers in a dispute over export taxes for their products. Since then, the relationship between the publishing giant's directors and the government has soured. The following year, the law restricting media ownership was passed.

Last year, Clarín editors accused the government of using the human rights group the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in a smear campaign against the publishing group's owner, Ernestina Noble. She was publicly accused of adopting two children that were stolen from other families during the past military dictatorship. But DNA samples showed that Felipe and Marcela Noble were not linked to the two families who presented a claim in 2010 against the family. The government has also been fighting to break the monopoly of a printing press owned by Clarín and the other leading daily, La Nación.