PRESS FREEDOM
‘Bought-off, corrupt’: Argentine president attacks ICIJ member Hugo Alconada Mon
Journalists in the South American country have called for the U.N. to intervene as the president’s public attacks become more hostile.
Argentine president Javier Milei escalated his rhetoric against journalists on Friday, singling out veteran investigative reporter and ICIJ member Hugo Alconada Mon along with four other reporters as “mercenaries of lies” and suggesting they should be “burned at the stake.”
Journalists associations in the country leapt to their colleagues’ defense, calling the remarks a “death threat” and asking the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of expression to intervene. The remarks took place at a private, livestreamed event after a judge dropped a fraud investigation into Milei and his sister that was propelled by reporting into the so-called ‘$Libra scandal.’
In 2025, the president posted on the social media platform X about $Libra coin, a cryptocurrency available for trade in Argentina, saying it would help finance small businesses. The price skyrocketed and then fell sharply after the president deleted his post, causing significant losses to some investors.
Journalists, including Alconada Mon, subsequently reported ties between the creators of $Libra, Milei and his sister, Karina Milei, dating back to 2024, prompting investors to file a complaint accusing the president and his sister of fraud and influence peddling.
The president took the stage only hours after the case was dropped: “As for those bought-off, corrupt journalists — those mercenaries of lies and serial fabricators of smear campaigns, such as Hugo Alconada Mon, Carlos Pagni, Paulino Rodrígues, Natalia Volosin, Luis Novaresio, and all the others who exploited this issue — let them explain who is going to take responsibility now for all the garbage they peddled,” he said, reading his remarks.
“In Argentina, there will be no mercy for these sons of bitches. Because, as Adam Smith said, showing mercy to sons of bitches is an injustice to the good people. And here, the good people deserve to thrive,” he added. “It is the sons of bitches who should be burned at the stake.”
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA), the country’s largest journalists association, said on Monday it had filed a complaint with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression to warn about “the serious deterioration of the conditions for the exercise of journalism in Argentina” and requested that the special rapporteur intervene with the Argentine government.
There have been 861 insults from the president to journalists so far this year, the country’s National Academy of Journalism posted in response.
“We now add a death threat,” the post reads. “Institutional violence affects democracy.”