The National Council of the Justicialist Party (Peronist Party) expressed its “strong and conclusive” support to President Cristina Kirchner, through a commune issued after its meeting held at the city of Corrientes, presided on by its Chairman, Néstor Kirchner.

The Justicialist National Council held that the recent report by the President on the Papel Prensa newsprint company “shows clearly the unscrupulous attitude of those who want to accumulate power without the least regard for legal regulations, ignoring the sovereign will of the Argentine people”.

“The brave and clear position adopted by our President in defense of freedom of expression  and of the free access to the information by the Argentine people, collides permanently with the stubborn and deliberate action of the Clarín Group and its partners, who pretend to preserve their privileges that date back to dictatorships or to weak Governments”, it added.

The National Council further stated that it supports all the actions adopted by the President to put a stop a stop to the media concentrations. Clarin currently controls a healthy monopoly on media groups in Argentina.

Former president of Argentina and General Secretary of UNASUR, Nestor Kirchner, spoke at a convention of the First International Congress of Political Science, organized by the government of the San Juan province just over a year ago. Kirchner remarked that Argentina has become an example for the advancement of human rights and that this force must resonate and effect the media.

Kirchner also questioned the opposition and called for “those that consider themselves center-left to act as such, and those that say they are center-right to do the same,” signaling his distress in Argentine politics. He even attacked the opposition by saying that “[they] will see how their grandchildren vote and will be ashamed by it.”

He concluded by informing those attending the Convention that “In Argentina we are forming a national, populist model that’s in its first stages,” referring to such party’s political candidates gearing up for the 2011 election. The Kirchners are involved in an ongoing battle with media giants Clarín and Papel Prensa, who now control a monopoly on Argentine media and the paper presses.

The US-based Interamerican Press Society (SIP), which began its bi-annual conference in Aruba today, has warned of a rise in violence against journalists across Latin America. Alejandro Aguirre, president of the SIP and sub-editor of the Miami newspaper Diario Las Américas has condemned “a siege against the press” especially “in Cuba, Venezuela and in nations allied with the politics of (Venezuelan) President Hugo Chávez.”

The Venezuelan news agency Telesur has responded, criticising the SIP’s failure to focus on violence against opponents of the coup in Honduras. Telesur accused the SIP of “focusing especially on the alleged aggression directed at journalists from right wing media” and “forgetting other press employees.”

The SIP’s conference, attended by the heads of 250 different media networks from across Latin America, is supposed to be an opportunity to consider a range of problems that currently face reporters throughout the region.

One point of discussion will be the Cuban journalist Guillermo Fariñas, who is currently carrying out a hunger strike in protest against prisoners of conscience held by the Castro regime. Among the imprisoned dissidents are 22 news workers. Also due to be discussed is Chávez’s call for internet censorship in Venezuela and the continuing house arrest of Guillermo Zuloaga, president of the private Venezuelan television channel, Globovisión.

However, the focus of the conference has been criticised by Telesur, who asserted in an article on Friday that the SIP was “is nothing more than a cartel of big media tycoons from across the continent, created in New York in 1950, as part of a North American intelligence operation.”

In particular, Telesur condemned the SIP’s failure to place greater emphasis on the violence in Honduras, where three journalists have been murdered over the past two and a half weeks. The NGO Reporters Without Borders has called the level of violence against media workers in the country “alarmingly high”. Telesur also criticised the SIP for ignoring violence against the state-owned Venezuelan Television network (VTV).

Rising violence against the press in Mexico will also be a point of concern during the SIP’s conference. Mexico is currently rated as the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists and a total of 43 reporters have been killed there since 2005.  Aguirre said that the deaths were related to “organised crime, corruption, and weak public institutions that have been unable to combat the issue so far.”

On Monday president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner fired back at critical media sources who she accused of defamation, misinforming the public and inventing news. The president was speaking in the Patagonia town of El Calafate, Santa Cruz province, at the inauguration of a major infrastructure project surrounding Glacier National Park. The president took the opportunity to respond to recent accusations of preferential treatment during the bidding process for the construction contract of a massive hydroelectric dam.

In the latest development in their ongoing feud with the administration, the Clarín media group had reported that the bidding for the lucrative contract had been limited to only a couple of firms, all with close ties to the Kirchners, who are from Santa Cruz province. The president denounced the charge, stating that “newspapers like Clarín and La Nación entered the second stage, which is to invent, invent news like this about companies that are friends of this government.” She went on to assure that there had been no preferential treatment in the bidding process.

The President further remarked that some media corporations have declared themselves as “enemies” of her administration, and added that “Journalists have all the right to disagree with the government’s politics, they can criticize us, but why do we have to go through a state of media paranoia and hysteria; why do they have to lie all the time, or treat me like I were a liar?” This last point of the president’s statement referenced a series of articles published by La Nación that called into question the president’s claim of being briefly detained in 1976 during the last military dictatorship. To this assertion the president retorted sharply that “they are the same newspapers that showed you a country that didn’t exist and a freedom that we didn’t have (during the last dictatorship).”