Duty of memory. The report "Miseria de la prensa del Proceso" in Humor Magazine. Press, ethics and denounce in the Argentine Postdictatorial Scene (1984)

Abstract

Our essay deals with the Report “Miseria de la prensa del Proceso”, focused in denouncing opportunist attitudes by press between last Argentinean dictatorship (1976-1983) and the return of democratic régime. It was made by journalists Carlos Gabetta and Sergio Joselovsky and published in nine fascicules in Humor magazine during several months of 1984.  It is Studied the way Humor self-attributed Authority to evaluate the conduct of press actors; the style and selection criteria of materials from main media of the era; and the strategies employed by Humor to put in evidence the changes in editorial line of denounced media. By using the approach of social memories studies, we stated that the Report classified press attitudes between complicity, victimization and heroism.  If that classification exposed opportunist and resistant attitudes in press actors, failed to detect the changes and ambiguities of each media along the time. In spite of these limitations, we conclude that the Report involved an early strategy to denounce the apparent continuity in newspapers and magazines from dictatorship to constitutional régime and, thus, their dubious democratic values, posed in ethical-political terms by a well-known independent magazine