In defense of the cultural patrimony

By Miguel Angel Pichetto
For The NATION

After more of a year in which it was listened to all the representatives of the cultural industries, from the Senate of the Nation it was managed to turn law a project that we hoped is transformed into the beginning of a true policy of State for an area that is strategic for all sovereign country. The protection of the cultural goods that we sanctioned was a necessity that became evident as a result of the serious crisis that affected to the country years in the last.

The norm preserves jobs in one of the most dynamic industries and guarantees stability to the press, putting to defense its independence and its paper of support of the republican system. Also, it assures that the production and the consumption of contents in our country will strongly continue tie with our cultural patrimony.

The mass media generate direct and indirect use in other industrial branches. At its moment, our country led the book edition in Latin America, but today the publishing seals are very few national presents in the local market. In the last years, many of the magazines that marked the graphical history of Argentina had to discontinue their exit, and are editorials that are in the heat of process of preventive aids. The same it happens with some radioelectric mass media. Lamentably, in the last decades the cultural industries were not accompanied by policies of State, and this law could be a flexion point.

The cultural goods have an irreplaceable dimension for the preservation of a nation, like articuladores of the freedom of expression, the right to the information, the discussion of the public agenda, the control of the institutional powers, the participation of the citizenship and the contribution in the daily construction of the identity of a country. Own UNESCO defines as a central aspect of the cultural good its capacity to construct the collective identity.

The cultural industries occupied one of the first places in the ranking of the sectors more affected by the crisis, to such an extent that until the moment of the sanction of this law its same existence was threatened by the speculative capital that it tried to remain with his assets to vile price.

With this law, now the State is in conditions for honoring its responsibility. The norm that sanctioned the Senate establishes that the property of mass media will have to be into the hands of national companies, allowing the foreign participation until a maximum of the thirty percent of the capital corresponding to stock. This way, we guaranteed that the mass media will not be object of hostile supplies on the part of bottoms vultures , as it denominates the foreign administrators of businesses, sometimes related with financial organizations of diffuse origin that specialize in the purchase of debt of companies in crisis. In the case of the average Argentineans, the economic crisis and the effect of the devaluation on the obligations extremely that had contracted in dollars during the decade last with the intention of modernizing itself, they make a prey tempting. In the last months, Argentine companies of communication supported several tendientes operations to take control of them by less of a third of their real value. These bottoms, when they do not obtain the effective control of means through this mechanism, try to acquire positions that allows them to unite any agreement of the direction of the company with their creditors and thus to force it to appear in call for, later, by means of the mechanism of cram down , to obtain the majority shareholder.

Through this law, east resource is limited, without it means in way some to deceive the rights of the creditors. What one becomes is to protect the operative continuity of mass media.

The tool now approved was labeled in some opportunities as protectionist and defendant to benefit to a sector of the national economy in damage from others. It was proven that so critical she is infundada. On the one hand, the powers Legislative and Executive are demonstrating to pay attention and to provide policies that consolidate to all the economic and social sectors of Argentina. On the other hand, the protection of the cultural goods is a decision of State rooted in the most important countries of the world. As much Europe as the United States equipped their systems with means of a regulatory scaffolding that protects the national character of the cultural industries. In the United States, there is a maximum limit of 25 percents for the participation of the audio-visual means foreign capital.

The law does not prevent the foreign mass media investment, but that assures the national control its conduction. In summary, we create to have equipped Argentina with a tool to exert of legitimate way the defense on its past and its cultural and informative future, and to guarantee the labor stability and the generation of new positions of use for journalistic journalists, producers, directors of cinema and television, actors and other Argentine professionals specialized in the cultural industry.