By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 15 2006 (IPS)

With the backing of journalists and lawyers, an Argentine non-governmental organisation has launched a proposal for regulating official advertising, in order to prevent the arbitrariness with which governments reward media outlets that support them and cold-shoulder the rest.

The document, “Basic principles for the regulation of official advertising”, was no sooner released by the Association for Civil Rights (ADC) than it immediately became a reference text for neighbouring countries such as Chile and Uruguay, where the same concerns over government practices exist, said Roberto Saba, the executive director of ADC.

“We weren’t intending to present a draft law, but to provide the minimum principles on which to base discussion,” Saba told IPS. “It’s not only aimed at Congress, because these decisions should also be taken at provincial and municipal levels.”

Norma Morandini, a journalist and congresswoman for the New Front, told IPS that the parliamentary commission on freedom of speech, which she forms part of, hardly ever met. But as the debate is taken up throughout civil society, the government will have to face up to the challenge, she said.

The document states that the practice of discriminatory placement of advertising is abetted by inadequate or vague legal frameworks which do not establish clear rules. The lack of these foments arbitrary decisions, prevents transparency and encourages corruption. Therefore, the ADC calls for a law on production, distribution and oversight of official advertising.

The proposal says that publicity on the actions of the authorities should be understood as a channel of communication between the State and its citizens. Such advertising should not promote the interests of any political party, or of the government itself, and neither should it serve the purpose of highlighting the administration’s achievements, the document adds.

Finally, the ADC suggests transparency mechanisms so that citizens can find out how the advertising budget is spent, and internal and external controls on the use of these funds. The criteria that should be established in the legal guidelines -the most sensitive question of all- were left open for future debate.

The ADC has been sounding a warning about new threats to freedom of expression since 2005. The problems now are not flagrant closures of media or physical attacks on journalists, but sophisticated methods, such as the discriminatory use of the government’s advertising budget.

Manipulation through the power of advertising funds is annoying for the big media outlets, but in the provinces the income from official advertising, or its withdrawal, spell life or death for small media businesses.

To shed light on the phenomenon, the ADC carried out a study, “Subtle Censorship”, in four provinces in 2005.

Based on interviews with journalists and owners of news media firms, the organisation documented cases of improper use of official advertising in the central province of Córdoba and the southern provinces of Río Negro, Neuquén and Tierra del Fuego. A legal case from one of the provinces made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which may set a legal precedent on the question.

In 2003, the newspaper El Diario, in Río Negro, accused the governor of the neighbouring province of Neuquén, Jorge Sobich, of withdrawing all official advertising after the paper published that his government had attempted to bribe a lawmaker to vote for a shortlist of three judges that the governor had nominated.

The Supreme Court requested the intervention of the chief prosecutor, Esteban Righi, who a few weeks previously had recommended that the newspaper’s case be thrown out. However, the arguments underlying the prosecutor’s opinion support the need for regulating how state advertising is contracted out.

“It is imperative to have a legal framework which establishes objective parameters so that the existence of illegitimate or unreasonable action or omission on the part of the state can be verified,” said Righi, who urged lawmakers to draw up “clear rules” in this area.

Given this legal vacuum, the ADC has presented the basic principles for a law. Among its fundamental arguments, the organisation recalled that the American Convention on Human Rights, the Inter-American Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression, and the Declaration of Chapultepec (adopted by the Hemisphere Conference on Free Speech in Mexico City in 1994), all pointed to the dangers of misuse of advertising.

During the launch of the document Tuesday, journalist Alfredo Leuco, who works in television, radio and the press, said that since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, there has never been so much abuse of official advertising, which has now reached a “scandalous” level.

Leuco mentioned the case of the weekly Noticias, published by the Perfil publishing company, which lost its official advertising. He said that Cabinet chief Alberto Fernández had explained the decision by claiming that the weekly publication was “extortionate.” Such a debatable opinion was sufficient to withdraw official advertising in this case.

“The use of official advertising to reward or punish particular media outlets is a shameless practice of the (Néstor) Kirchner administration,” Leuco complained, mentioning a “novel” element in the stifling of freedom of speech: “Pressure on private businesses not to sponsor programmes by journalists who voice criticism.”

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