A photographer comes up against a security barrier during a protest outside the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, in March 2025. Image: Shutterstock
Under Pressure, but Undeterred: How the Investigative Press Corps Perseveres in Argentina
Javier Milei had been Argentina’s president for nearly two years when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held a session in which participants warned of the “rapid and pronounced” deterioration of freedom of expression in the country.
During the hearing, journalism and civil society organizations testified to their experiences practicing under a flamboyant president who hit the campaign trail with a chainsaw, and who had positioned himself on the side of right-wing antagonists of the press like US President Donald Trump and his former Brazilian counterpart, President Jair Bolsonaro.
The November 2025 hearing revealed data from the Freedom of Expression Monitoring Project of the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA), which showed attacks on the press surged last year to the highest number since tracking began in 2008. In 2025, the report found, there were 278 attacks on freedom of expression, a 55% increase over 2024 and triple the figure from before Milei took office.
The most striking finding of FOPEA’s report, which was titled Journalism at Risk of Silence, was that the president was responsible for four out of every 10 incidents. In addition to using sweeping statements such as “We don’t hate journalists enough” or suggesting 95% of journalists are criminals, Milei has personally targeted journalists on social media and in interviews since taking office. He has accused the media profession in general of acting as a collusive bloc, adding that “the time has come for them to face the consequences for their lies, slander, defamation, and even acts of extortion.”
Fernando Stanich, a reporter from the city of Tucumán and president of FOPEA, says that while all journalists have been affected by the increasingly hostile press climate, the situation “affects investigative journalism most of all because it is the journalism that truly makes those in power uncomfortable.”
International monitoring bodies have also been paying attention. In its annual World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Argentina 98th out of 180 countries in 2026, down 11 places from the year before. In 2024, it ranked 66th; in 2023, 40th. The latest drop meant the country went from a situation classified as “problematic” to “difficult.”
“I think it is not so much a matter of the number of attacks — since those have always occurred under every administration — but rather that the response to investigations and criticism has become more aggressive,” explains veteran journalist Hugo Alconada Mon, investigations editor of La Nación newspaper and a member of FOPEA.
Alconada Mon is the author of several investigations relating to the Milei administration. One relates to the $LIBRA cryptocurrency scam — in which the president has been implicated. Though Milei denies acting improperly, the case remains under official investigation. Alconada Mon also worked on a story about an alleged illicit enrichment case involving former chief of staff and presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni. (Adorni resigned after the exposé, though he said he did so “with a clear conscience.”) Another case involving allegations of bribery related to the national disability agency reached all the way to Karina Milei, the president’s sister and secretary general of the presidency. She denied the claims and her brother, the president, condemned the allegations as political theater.
But one revelation by Alconada Mon triggered the most aggressive and coordinated response. In May 2025, he published details of the government’s National Intelligence Plan (PIN), a secret 170-page document that listed as a priority the monitoring of individuals who “erode trust in the government” and could “influence public opinion.”
“As soon as this information was published, I received 10 attempts to hack my cell phone, followed by two on my email and two on my X account. Then came calls and threats from four numbers in different provinces,” Alconada Mon explains. While four suspects have been identified, more than a year later, the judicial investigation has barely moved forward.
The Office of the President denied that the aims of the Intelligence Plan were persecution. Milei reposted the government statement on his X account while calling journalists “the greatest creators of fake news in the history of humanity.”
Following the Trump Playbook
Milei won the presidency in 2023 in a surprise election: he had lost the first round by more than six points but ended up winning the runoff. He had entered politics as a legislator after gaining fame as a polemicist on television shows, where he presented himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” libertarian who advocated dismantling the state.
Shouting “Long live freedom, damn it!” he called for an end to the “political caste” and championed drastic austerity measures as the formula to end inflation, all while hurling insults at political opponents, cultural figures, journalists, and even Pope Francis. Far from abandoning this aggressive, unbridled style, he deepened it once in power.
Reporters Without Borders links the deterioration of freedom of expression in Argentina to Milei’s ties with his counterpart Donald Trump, who “has turned attacks on the press and journalists into a systematic practice.” The group adds that the same is happening with El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, another of “Trump’s fervent defenders in Latin America who are following the same playbook.”
“Stigmatizing discourse” – when used as a tool to discredit and discipline the press – is one of the measures tracked by the Voces del Sur Network (Red VDS) to assess press freedom. Its Map of Silence ranking from 2025 found that Argentina accounted for the highest number of alerts for this category in the region, with 139 of the 547, followed by Colombia (61) and El Salvador (58).
“When these narratives are promoted by actors with political power or high public visibility, they not only affect the reputation and safety of journalists and media outlets but also amplify exposure to other forms of violence and legitimize news attacks,” the report notes.
“These past two years have been very difficult for us,” notes Sandra Crucianelli, an Argentine investigative journalist and member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who says being held in contempt by “the person holding the country’s highest office” brings a series of challenges.
In addition to stigmatization and online harassment, she says the material obstacles to conducting investigative journalism have also piled up: “Access to public information has become difficult. For example, many databases are outdated, and relevant information is no longer being published.”
A case in point is that the Chamber of Deputies historically published the list of staff assigned to each political bloc and each legislator. “That is no longer available. Access to data has also become difficult in the Senate, and the integrated Public Employment database has not been updated since 2023, which we used to analyze the size of the state and trends in public sector salaries,” says Crucianelli.
These de facto restrictions are compounded by government actions, such as the amending by decree of the Access to Public Information Law, which limited the scope of what data reporters could ask for and redefined what constitutes public information. Or measures like the closure of the leading public news agency Télam.
For her part, investigative journalist Emilia Delfino, also a member of ICIJ as well as an editor at Mongabay, points out that “hostility from those in power is dangerous because it can very easily become physical aggression, and that has unpredictable and undesirable consequences.”
“The risk has multiplied and is coupled with journalists’ loss of credibility. It’s a combination that will be difficult to break out of,” she warns. “Another central risk is that this hostility from the authorities detracts from our objectivity… No matter how deeply personal the attacks on journalists from those in power may be, we must not fall into that game. We must be careful with our language, how we report the news, and how we express ourselves in this context of rising violence,” she adds.
Judicial Attacks and Fake News
The deterioration in freedom of expression in Argentina has also reached the courts. According to FOPEA records, 30 legal cases were initiated against journalists in 2025, an unprecedented number for the country. Even more unheard of is the fact that eight of these cases were brought by the President.
Only one remains open: a civil suit against journalist Ari Lijalad. Milei accused the investigative reporter and host of El Destape’s radio program #Habráconsecuencias (#Therewillbeconsequences) of “slander and libel” following the publication of an opinion piece. After being sued, the journalist received support from 600 colleagues who offered to republish the article.
Lijalad maintains that the court case was initiated in revenge for his investigation into the food intended for soup kitchens that was withheld by the government. The article was published just six months after Milei took office and was one of the first to make waves.
“Milei seeks to scare us because he wants his opinion to be treated as an indisputable fact,” says Lijalad. “In these cases, the punishment is the legal process itself, because these are lawsuits that should be immediately dismissed based on IACHR precedents on freedom of expression, yet no judge was willing to do so.”
Another emblematic case is that of journalist Julia Mengolini, who in 2025 suffered an online attack involving an AI-generated sex video that she says the president amplified. Subjected to constant online harassment, the founder of the media outlet Futurock announced last year that she would file charges against Milei and a group of people close to him for “incitement to hatred and collective violence” and “coercive threats.”
“Violence especially affects female journalists, who stop covering certain topics for fear of attacks of this kind, because for them these tend to target their private lives,” notes Stanich, the president of FOPEA. The list of those who have suffered personalized attacks by the president on his X account and in interviews includes notable journalists like María O’Donell, Romina Manguel, Luciana Geuna, and Débora Plager, among others.
Repression Beyond Mere Rhetoric and Lawsuits
There has also been a rise in physical assaults on journalists, with a report by the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA) highlighting a 66% increase in the number of journalists assaulted by security forces during protests compared to the previous year.
In March 2025, photographer Pablo Grillo was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police during a demonstration by retirees — who march every Wednesday in front of the National Congress. Although he recovered from his injuries, he suffers from permanent after effects.
“Using gas masks and helmets to protect ourselves became part of our work,” photojournalist Tomás F. Cuesta told the IACHR. A contributor to local and international media outlets such as the AFP news agency, Cuesta was also beaten and detained while working on protests outside Congress. Another photographer — Rodrigo Abd — was struck by a water cannon.
The government’s latest move was the closure of the press room at the Casa Rosada — Argentina’s version of the White House and the seat of the executive power. It was shuttered for 11 days in early May 2026 and journalists’ press credentials revoked. The government said the move was as a result of two reporters filming with smart glasses, while reporters criticized “an explicit attack on press freedom, the practice of journalism, and the public’s right to access information.”
And a let-up any time soon seems unlikely: journalists are bracing themselves for the possible repeal of the Professional Journalist Statute, which has been in effect since 1946, and the revocation of which the government included in its labor reform bill.
“The Statute serves as a protective shield for journalists against political and economic pressure. It ensures equal working conditions, safeguards the confidentiality of sources, and guarantees access to public buildings, intellectual property, and journalistic ethics,” explains Stanich. “Losing it constitutes a direct attack on freedom of expression.”
Paula Bistagnino is a freelance reporter based in Buenos Aires. Her work has been published by Revista Anfibia, Página 12, Revista Ñ, and Infobae, as well as the Spanish outlet elDiario.es. In 2015 she received the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Journalism scholarship from the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), and in 2020, an investigative journalism grant from Connectas. She has spent more than a decade investigating Opus Dei. She has won two prizes from FOPEA, one for best investigation in 2021 and best investigative book in 2024.