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teleSUR President Patricia Villegas is demanding Argentina restore the television channel's signal in the country's Open Digital Television or TDA, following a move by the government of Mauricio Macri to remove the regional outlet from the cable service.
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"I have not come only to say that teleSUR has the right to be on Argentines (TV) screens, I came to say that any audio-visual platform has that right," Villegas said in an interview with the newspaper El Clarin.
The demand follows the decision by the government of President Mauricio Macri to yank the regional news broadcaster off the air in March. The move was excoriated by a wide range of politicians, intellectuals and journalists across the region as an attack on free speech and a blatant act of censorship.
Villegas is currently in Buenos Aires and has met with lawmakers who support teleSUR's return to the airwaves. They presented a bill on Tuesday “to return the signal to the regional news broadcaster in order to give plurality to all voices.”
Patricia Villegas (fourth from left) joined in the hearing by other media and human rights activists.
Argentina was a founding member and partner of the regional broadcaster until the incoming right-wing government decided to end its relationship with the public broadcaster, alleging the government's inability to direct the channel's editorial line.
The international news channel RT en Español, owned by the Russian state, was also removed from the open TV broadcast in Argentina right after teleSUR, but a new agreement with the Macri administration restored the signal to the cable service.
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"We are the biggest news broadcaster of our region and given that we aim to have the same opportunity as RT," Villegas told La Nacion in an interview.
Villegas is expected to meet with officials from the Argentine government in order to negotiate a deal that like the one with RT, which could return teleSUR to the South American country.
teleSUR was launched in 2005 as a multi-state funded television network sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia, as an alternative to mainstream media coverage of Latin America and the world.
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