« All articles from this issue
Communication, Freedom and Change, Vol. 7 - 2000, No. 4
Newspapers' Struggle for Survival in Authoritarian Regimes: The Examples of "Madrid" (Spain) and "La opinión" (Argentina)
Authoritarian regimes usually allow the press to act occasionally with a certain degree of freedom. Within this restrictive environment, critical newspapers may use different tactics to survive and, at the same time, to head for democracy. This was the case of two newspapers, Madrid in Spain and La Opinión in Argentina, whose battle against dictatorship eventually ended with their closing in 1971 and 1977, respectively. The two newspapers were symbols of resistance against the authoritarian regimes in their countries and became ideological, political and cultural reference points for democratic changes. In political terms, Madrid and La Opinión adopted similar strategies of opening and resistance despite their specific national contexts. In terms of journalistic profession, the two newspapers took the prestigious Parisian daily Le Monde as a model, which was a rather common tendency among newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet both of them were particularly vulnerable as commercial companies: various administrative and legal measures taken against them because of some supposed legal offences led eventually to the closure of the two publishing companies.
