SON OF A BITCH

El CEO de Clarín, Héctor Magnetto, está atravesando el estado de pupa. Exuda una baba blanca que escapa incontinente por las comisuras y cae sobre la blanca seda de su camisa blanca. El odio es blanco como la sal que transpira el miedo de los muertos vivos.


En una entrevista con el periodista Jude Webber, del diario británico The Financial Times, el CEO de Clarín, Héctor Magnetto, lanzó duras críticas al Gobierno de Cristina Fernández.


"En la Argentina no hay lugar para el disenso y la crítica"...

"Tal vez Clarín es el camuflaje de un proyecto hegemónico más ambicioso para avanzar contra los derechos de las compañías y los ciudadanos en otros sectores e instituciones. Nosotros podemos ser la espina que tienen hoy clavada en el costado, pero el objetivo final va más allá de nosotros y tiene que ver con silenciar la información, el disenso y cualquier tipo de fiscalización del poder"...

"La Casa Rosada busca silenciar la información y cualquier tipo de fiscalización del poder"...

"La ofensiva contra Clarín evidencia que la administración de Cristina Kirchner está entrando en una fase confiscatoria"...


Leamos la nota original y practiquemos la lengua de Shakespeare. The Financial Times titula...

• Media chief attacks Argentine president

Argentina’s government is “bastardising” the cause of human rights in an irrational vendetta against the country’s main media group, the group’s chief executive claims.

Héctor Magnetto also accused the government of Cristina Fernández of undermining property rights in a country already lagging behind its peers in foreign investment.

Mr Magnetto, whose Grupo Clarín is listed in London and owns the biggest Spanish-language daily newspaper in Latin America, as well as radio, cable television and internet interests, broke his silence on what he sees as government efforts to stifle dissent in an e-mail interview with the Financial Times. The 66-year-old businessman prefers e-mail after surgery for cancer in 2007 left him with speech difficulties.

“We have suffered everything: slander, threats, spying, being denounced publicly. I suppose they’ve realised by now that if the aim was to tame us, it won’t be easy,” Mr Magnetto said in his first interview in three years.

His remarks came after Ms Fernández last month accused Clarín and La Nación, Argentina’s other main paper, of colluding with the military dictatorship more than 30 years ago to force the sale of Papel Prensa, a newsprint company, by a prominent family whose members were tortured.

The president alleges that the two powerful newspapers used Papel Prensa to squeeze their competitors.

She wants a judicial investigation of the sale and newsprint declared “in the national interest” to guarantee equal access for all print media. Clarín and La Nación deny wrongdoing.

Mr Magnetto noted that “the state has been [a shareholder] in the company for 35 years and never questioned either its history or management”.

He said an official report released by the government was based on “lies and manipulation”. Mr Magnetto accused the Fernández administration of “pushing on with its policy of bastardising and twisting the cause of human rights to satisfy a desire for power, persecution and personal vengeance”.

The report came days after officials declared that Clarín’s internet provider, Fibertel, was operating illegally and gave it 90 days to close. Clarín is fighting the “irrational” move, which could force 1m subscribers to switch providers.

Clarín and the presidential couple – Ms Fernández and her husband, predecessor and power broker Néstor Kirchner – have not always been at each others throats. But the group’s opposition to the government in a fierce conflict with farmers in 2008 marked it out as an “enemy for not getting behind the official line”, Mr Magnetto said. “There is no place for dissent or criticism. Either you’re an unconditional supporter who is co-opted, or an enemy to be destroyed,” Mr Magnetto said.

He saw the offensive against Clarín as evidence that the government was entering “a more serious, confiscatory phase” and noted “growing concern, not for political and judicial risks but about respect for property . . . indeed, foreign investment in Argentina is a long way from being proportional to that of other countries in the region.”

Clarín also sees itself as the target of a new media law that would force it to sell some assets to open up what the government considers its unhealthy dominance of the market – an assertion Mr Magnetto denies. The law is in limbo pending legal challenges.

“Maybe Clarín is camouflage for a more ambitious, hegemonic project to advance against citizens’ and companies’ rights in other sectors and institutions,” Mr Magnetto said. “We may be the thorn in their side today but the final goal goes beyond us and has to do with silencing information, dissent and any audit of power.”

Como buen cipayo, sale a buscar ayuda por las calles extranjeras, grita desesperado a quien quiera escucharlo que es víctima de una campaña sucia. Como Elisa Carrió, como Mauricio Macri, el CEO tira la pelota afuera, la culpa es del otro. Es el asesino de la película, que tira el arma por la alcantarilla y vuelve a la escena del crimen fingiendo inocencia: ¿Qué pasó?

Se acomoda la corbata Hermes, y sobreactuando angustia dice: "Yo, argentino..."

Daniel Mancuso