The Círculo de la Prensa de Córdoba, co-founder of the Círculo Sindical de la Prensa y la Comunicación de Córdoba (CISPREN), organised and held the first National Congress of Journalists in the city of Córdoba on 25 May 1938, in response to the importance of the situations and injustices experienced in the exercise of journalism.

By Miguel Julio Rodríguez Villafañe

The first draft of what later became the Statute of the Journalist was produced. In the deliberations, journalist Ernesto Barabraham already stated that “given the complexity of the division of labour in the modern press, relations between journalists and owners had ceased to be purely private and had become a public matter. In the increasingly notorious disputes between individual journalists and owners of large dailies, only the state has the capacity to mediate and defend the former, who are, after all, the ones who produce the public content of newspapers.

Also in Congress, it was decided to celebrate “Journalists’ Day” on 7 June. This date commemorates the birth, in 1810, of the first national newspaper, called “La Gazeta de Buenos Ayres”.

It was made clear then that regulations, were needed to help dignify the work and economic status of the men and women who carried out the craft of journalism, in the relationship between work and capital.

From an unwavering trade union effort, the Statute of the Professional Journalist was passed by Decree 7618 of 1944. Then, in 1946, the National Congress ratified the aforementioned Decree by Law 12.908.

Professional journalism fulfils a function of social interest, a fundamental service to all people in particular and to society in general and in this, in its name, exercises an implicit representation of the right to investigate, receive and disseminate information.

For its part, the journalistic vocation must guard against the cancer of the profession, which causes confusion when reporting the news ceases to be an act of informational justice for all and becomes the service of the fame that comes with media presence.

Also, unfortunately, many fall into the temptation of becoming mercenaries of the pen, at the service of big interests or powers, and even more seriously, when sometimes they do not differentiate between opinions and information.

To which we must add the seriousness of the fact that much journalism operates as prophets of hatred.

This is all the more dangerous in the digital age, in which information is disseminated at very high speed and inappropriate or self-interested unprofessional action has a negative impact.

It should also be noted that lies, over-information and disinformation are weapons that destroy democracy, especially when they are spread by the mass media, many of which are dominated by national and/or transnational companies that operate according to hegemonic logics.

Likewise, these media concentrations, some of which are true monopolies and/or oligopolies, in certain situations manage to condition governments and society itself, in accordance with the interests they represent and advocate.

Moreover, these concentrations do not give their workers much choice of criteria, which leads to the self-censorship of journalists and communicators. All of this is part of a tendency to politically discipline the press behind a single discourse.

On the other hand, for some time now, those who report have been dominated by people who are not journalists, but by technicians and men from the financial world. They treat information as a commodity, the only thing that matters is that what is reported is attractive and sells. The globalised world of finance, coupled with an authoritarian fundamentalism of market economics, has severely restricted the professional journalistic task and the journalistic companies themselves.

At the same time, in some cases, journalists become the fuse that is easily blown when their journalistic reporting disturbs certain interests. In many cases, self-censorship also painfully appears as a survival guideline.

Always in history, reporting the truth was not an easy task and required a dose of heroism. Courage that has filled the noblest pages of the profession and the struggle for freedom of expression in the world. Journalists have been victims of political persecution and imprisonment. They have also been murdered, injured, kidnapped, intimidated, threatened, pressured, slandered, libelled and attacked in various ways. In addition, they have been spied on, persecuted and have had to choose exile, among many other ways that have conditioned their work and their vocation for truth and freedom. All of which obliges us to adopt a necessary social and governmental attitude towards those who take on this important task.

Also, as a regrettable fact of reality, the employment situation of many professional journalists has become too precarious, and they are increasingly insecure in their stable jobs or have to work as freelancers or under the euphemism of “self-tax payers”. All of this with salaries that are not commensurate with the importance of the work being done.

At the same time, the impact of the digital era on journalistic work has subjected journalism to digital automation and new controls, the latter subordinated to the click-throughs of internet platforms and not necessarily related to the quality of the work done.

Likewise, the presence of the internet has reshaped many journalistic routines, changing the organisation of work in part-time work. This adds negatively to the phenomenon of new skills to be developed as a result of the polyfunctionality and multitasking that is demanded. Now the same journalist must, on many occasions, remove them or film with a mobile phone, write the report and send it to the media via the Internet. These situations seem irreversible for many of the activities carried out by press workers, which has not necessarily brought them better salaries. In addition to this, there has been an increase in so-called teleworking, which locks news producers in.

The struggle for the exercise of freedom of information has been and is a challenge for everyone, in which journalists, the media, democratic republican institutions and society must make an effort to duly ensure, generating adequate economic conditions and dignifying spaces, to allow the development of the journalistic profession, with independence, dignity and human and technical quality.