(Periodistas/IFEX) – On 19 August 1998, journalist Olga Wornat was unexpectedly fired from hosting the radio programme “Horizonte Hoy”. Wornat had a signed contract with the radio station, FM Horizonte, ending 31 December, to host the show, which airs daily from 6 to 9 a.m. However, on 19 August, she received a call from the […]
(Periodistas/IFEX) – On 19 August 1998, journalist Olga Wornat was
unexpectedly fired from hosting the radio programme “Horizonte Hoy”.
Wornat had a signed contract with the radio station, FM Horizonte, ending
31 December, to host the show, which airs daily from 6 to 9 a.m. However,
on 19 August, she received a call from the station’s artistic director, who
told her not to show up at work because the station had taken a “political
and irreversible decision” to rescind her contract. The next day, Wornat
showed up at her workplace, accompanied by a notary, but she was denied
access. “I arrived in the morning and a security guard prevented me from
entering, instead showing me a memo which read, ‘by decision of this
company, access to the radio station is to be denied to journalist Olga
Wornat,'” she told Periodistas.
Wornat also reported that about ten days ago she began receiving messages
from third parties advising her to tone down her criticisms of government.
The day before her contract was cancelled, Wornat had interviewed Minister
of Labour Erman González. In the radio interview, González made very
controversial comments, in particular one sentence which made the front
page of the following day’s morning edition of the “La Nacion” newspaper:
“There might be a feeling outside, a feeling that I can share, that power
[in Argentina] doesn’t rest with the Casa Rosada [the President’s office,]”
he said. According to Wornat, “the director of the radio’s news programme,
Jorge Sicolillo, intimated to me that there was a great deal of anger
within government over the interview with González.” The journalist has
also been working on a book on the ten years of Carlos Menem’s presidency;
the book is due to be published during the next presidential election
campaign.
Periodistas fears that the journalist may have been fired as a result of
direct government pressure on the corporation which owns the radio station
— the head (f) of the company, Fortabat, is very close to President Menem
— for the statements made by González on Wornat’s show and for the
forthcoming launch of the book.
