68 Federal Authority for Information Technology and Communications into a new entity called the National Communications Entity (ENACOM), which is responsible for media regulation in Argentina. ENACOM is composed of a seven-member board with three individuals appointed by Congress and four members appointed by the president (Freedom House, 2017). In terms of promoting connectivity and promoting the accessibility of internet and telecommunications within Argentina, ENACOM has done well. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ENACOM issued regulations aiding users with unpaid internet or mobile service bills and undertook projects aiming to provide internet access to marginalized communities. However, ENACOM also approved the rules that allowed groups like Grupo Clarín to offer quadruple play through its relevant subsidiary bodies (Freedom House, 2020). Another decentralized and autarkic body sanctioned in 2018 by the Argentine Congress under Macri was the National Competition Authority (ANC) (Argentine Republic, 2018). The ANC was proposed as an enforcement agency meant to replace and update the current regulatorybody, theNationalCommissionforthe Defense of Competition (CNDC), following the Argentine Congress’s passage of a new antitrust law that incorporates both “significant changes to the merger control and anticompetitive conduct investigation procedures currently in force” (del Pino & del Rio, 2018). While many aspects of the new antitrust law (Law No. 27,442) have been implemented thus far, the change in leadership and Argentina’s focus on the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the official creation of the ANC. Recommendations President Alberto Fernández entered office in December of 2019, but to date has proposed no early policies that would affect multimedia groups such as Grupo Clarín. Thus, a number of questions present themselves. First and foremost, does freedom of the press currently exist within Argentina’s media landscape? And, by comparison, is the Argentine media landscape more diverse in 2021 than it was following the dictatorship in the mid1980s? Finally, and most importantly, what can be done to adequately address the problem of monopolization? Argentina’s constitution still upholds freedom of speech and bars censorship of the press, so previous fears of the government gaining control of the press and limiting certain content are not really relevant in an absolute sense. However, censorship by means of the Argentine judicial system does exist, and it can have an extremely damaging effect on the media outlets and journalists involved. When reporting on political corruption, for example, journalists “are often the targets of civil defamation suits that usually end with damages awards designed to strangle them financially” (Reporters Without Borders, 2021). While content cannot legally be censored in print products or online, there are still loopholes for those with adequate resources to affect what information is accessed or trusted by the public. Overall, news outlets can report without fear of complete government control, but freedom of the press does not yet exist in its fullest capacity in Argentina. As discussed previously, the growth of the internet has allowed for the diversification of voices when reporting news, but the current high concentration of media ownership creates barriers of entry that never previously existed for smaller media organizations. Even if small news outlets are able to get any sort of local audience, new competitors will pose little threat to the few media groups that reach the majority of consumers (Becerra et al., 2012). While new media groups like Grupo América or Grupo Indalo have emerged over the years, themajority of media in Argentina still remains in the hands of Grupo Clarín. Local radio and television signals are disappearing, and independent newspapers are being bought by conglomerates like Grupo Clarín and others. Despite Argentine media outlets having much more freedom than they had during the previous dictatorship, the nature of highly concentrated media ownership in Argentina does not make the landscape more diverse than under Videla. That said, solving the problem of highly concentrated media ownership and monopolization isnot a simple task. The creation of ENACOM was a good first step, but the media/
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