Sabbatella reiterates AFSCA will not control editorial guidelines

The head of the Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA) Martín Sabbatella spoke today in further defence of the government-run institution regarding statements made by another representative regarding controls on editorial guidelines of the country’s media outlets.

During a press interview this morning, Sabbatella assured that today “there is a campaign in place to use the Media law as a way to portray the control editorial lines, journalists or a particular programme.”

“All of this is a strategy by concentrated media groups to want to present the new media law as something that severs freedom of expression,” the organization’s head continued.

Today’s statements come after Sabbatella yesterday jumped at the defence of AFSCA official Nicolás Cherei, in charge of the northern Buenos Aires province, who on Sunday night said that “if each media group is to have different owners, we are to control their editorial lines.”

Yesterday Sabbatella denied that the institution would control media outlets’ editorial outlines and said that Cherei’s statements had been edited in order to make him appear to announce such a policy.

Today, in a morning radio interview Cherei took back his alleged statements and recognized that he “could have made a mistake” with some of the things he said.

That said, the ASFCA official said that overall today the institution wants “more editorial criteria to exist.”

Similarly, Cherei recognized that his words on Sunday had “larger repercussions that what he would have imagined,” however, “we cannot and we should not analyse editorial lines of the media.”