The primary responsibility of journalism is to give testimony in difficult times. This was true on March 24, 1977, when an Argentine writer signed, with blood, the most important journalistic material of our recent history, using truthful information, analytical rigor, social commitment and narrative quality. It continues to be true today, in a world with known and unknown dangers, undergoing an economic crisis that is also a crisis of the civilization, in addition to the new context of the pandemic. ARG Medios emerges in this world, in this moment, and under this premise.

In times of fake news and police operations unfolding live and directly transmitted, when there are those who brag about how many covers will they need to bring down a government, we believe that journalism without ethics nor rigor could be efficient but it is not journalism. Let us leave the war journalism to war correspondents.

We depart from the idea that “when something has to be said, it is written anywhere.” This is why we decided to attempt and launch a critical communication project, with a committed team and a network of correspondents capable of telling the story while they make the story from the territories. From Argentina but with the view of the world. Beyond the city of Buenos Aires, in the search of a national and federal agenda. In Latin America, in all of its continental expansion from the Southern Cone to the Caribbean. And, with an explicit emphasis in the countries of the global south, conscious of the existence of life and news that transcends the idea of an “international community,” monopolized in general by the fist of the dominant nations in the informative and the rest.

A tradition of press guides us where the best journalists have written chronicles, essays, poetry and novels, which is why we believe that the written word is important and necessary. Not any word, but the just word in its double meaning of pertinence and justice, of precision and beauty. Responsible and informed writing with an irreplaceable voice of those who are protagonists in the story. But the written word is as necessary as it is insufficient: we are because we know and we know through many means. This is why ARG Medios has diverse content and formats, using audiovisual as well as graphic and radio formats, each one with its specific language and particular challenges.

The ambition to install an agenda of our own through the force of arguments or good ideas, in this moment, is naïve. We see how the democratic promise of digital media and social networks does not exist in reality. On the contrary, we see a situation of growing concentration of oligopolic companies, of confusion between “freedom of the press” and the “freedom of the company,” the absence of transparency and neutrality online. However, this complex situation does not discourage us, but we believe that in order to confront this situation we need greater degrees of coordination.

Democracy is not a technique and the democratization of information and communication will not emerge in a spontaneous way. As sons and daughters of an imperfect democracy, we want to contribute to the correction of the shortcomings in the territory that calls on us. We know firsthand the difficulties that alternative media has of reaching mass audiences, that is a valid concern and should not mislead us in the search to do more and better journalism. This is why we believe that the efforts should be oriented towards building a network of other experiences of communication; coordinate and overcome obstacles from a logic of collaboration.

ARGMedios seeks to communicate without corporativisms. We are not here to build ourselves up, but to strengthen an alternative and people-driven agenda, with information as a right and not as a good to be bought and sold. Communications that puts the emphasis on the people and not on things, capable of highlighting processes and the contexts, that communicates without saturating. This communication seeks to emphasize truth, which has been injured in the times of post-truth.

ARG Medios wants to give testimony in these difficult times. But it is not in solitude nor without leaders, we want to coordinate between experiences and projects that feel identified in this goal. From our humble trenches, we work towards the construction of a more just and dignified world that will be heard from.