Argentine journalist Roberto Navarro was attacked at a hotel in Buenos Aires by men who allegedly shouted comments similar to President Javier Milei’s discourse, his colleagues have reported.

Navarro, an economic journalist and director of El Destape, was in a meeting at a hotel in the Microcentro area on Monday when a man approached him, insulting him and shouting comments of a similar tone to President Javier Milei’s online insults, his colleague Ariel Lijalad said on El Destape’s radio station. When Navarro confronted his aggressor, another man approached him from behind and hit him hard in the back of the head.

After the incident, he managed to get himself to a nearby clinic, where he received medical attention. Lijalad said he would remain in hospital under observation for 48 hours because he suffers from a blood coagulation disorder. His colleague Mariano Martín said on his radio show that Navarro’s “face is completely swollen” and that he was “badly bruised.”

Navarro’s lawyer, Graciana Peñafort, wrote on X that her client would report the attack to the authorities as soon as he leaves hospital.

The Herald approached people close to Navarro for comment, but no further details have been communicated at present. 

In 2019, the journalist suffered a similar incident while leaving the radio station when he encountered three men who shouted abuse at him. At the time, Navarro claimed that the attack was politically motivated and blamed then-President Mauricio Macri’s rhetoric.

Milei has attacked journalists throughout his presidency, both singling out individual journalists and portraying the profession more broadly as corrupt. On Saturday, two days before the attack on Navarro, he wrote in a post on X: “I think people don’t hate these hitmen with press credentials enough. If they knew them better, they’d hate them even more than politicians.” Since his inauguration in late 2023, the president has still not held a single press conference.

Last year, Argentina fell 26 places in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index. Reporters Without Borders, the organization that compiles the index, described Milei as a “self-proclaimed predator of press freedom” and “a disturbing new threat to the right to information.”

In March, photojournalist Pablo Grillo was injured covering a weekly protest from retirees when police fired a tear gas canister that hit him in the head, fracturing his skull, as he was photographing the heavy police presence at the scene. He completed his third surgery last week after spending weeks in intensive care. 

A group of Argentine journalists filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in February 2024 after at least 35 media workers and lawyers were injured by police rubber bullets and tear gas while covering protests against Milei’s Ley Bases. Wounds included rubber bullet impacts to the face.

The Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA) also spoke out publicly about the attack on Navarro. “Repeating insults and attacks against journalists, whether in official speeches or even by the President himself, can generate a climate of daily violence in society that we cannot condone,” they stated in a post on X, while also expressing “solidarity” with Navarro.