CNN Radio has been a mainstay in Argentina for over half a decade, but on Tuesday it announced that it would be shutting its doors and leaving the South American country.
Why? Javier Milei isn't footing the bill anymore.
CNN Radio's international news network, which also has subsidiaries in Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Peru, began operating in Argentina in March 2019 and broadcasts from Buenos Aires. It will continue its "journalistic" programs through December 19 or 31 — I'm seeing reports of both days — and then the AM 950 signal "will be handed over again to its local partner, Argentinos Media , made up of businessman Marcelo González ( WAM Entertainment ) and the Brito family (Banco Macro)." It will also go back to its original name, Radio Belgrano. It will reportedly play music with some news mixed in, retaining a few of the current personalities.
If you ask CNN, or its parent company Warner Bros Discovery, this is all about restructuring, changing its international footprint. But if you dig a little deeper, you realize it's something else entirely. A CNN operation can't survive in a free market without government subsidies.
You see, Argentina has something called pauta oficial, which is state advertising money that goes to private media. Or it did. Previous governments spent billions to inflate revenue and create loyalty. From January to October 2023, it spent around $40 million alone.
Milei being Milei, he campaigned on a promise that he would end it, and not long after he took office, he did. "We completely eliminated official advertising, which was used by the [political elite] to promote themselves in the media. We don't need to bribe the media, we don't need liar journalists paid with public funds," he said upon making the move. He also shut down the country's Télam state news agency.
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The response from the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities (ADEPA), which has about 180 members, was to whine about it. The organization claimed that the decree Milei signed to do away with state advertising removed "guaranteed access to public information." It also accused Milei of being hostile toward the media, which was setting the stage for "an army of trolls" who "multiply verbal aggressions and thus open the way to physical violence." It claimed that this "hostile climate encourages self-censorship and disrupts journalistic activity."
Why do leftists always think that making them earn their own way is just someone being mean?
Anyway, rumors have circulated within the country's media circles for weeks that without the government money, CNN's operation was not viable. Similar media outlets have faced the same problem. CNN also reportedly circulated internal warnings that this was coming for quite a while.
A couple of weeks ago, Milei said that Americans, especially in New York City, who wanted to get away from socialism were welcome to move to Argentina. It doesn't sound like a half-bad idea.
