Télam news agency, along with other public media, will be placed under the purview of Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni, the Milei administration has revealed. The government had previously announced that it would be dissolving Télam. Adorni confirmed the news during his Tuesday press briefing.

“The plan remains exactly the same,” he said. “Télam will be shuttered effectively, and Congress will determine the future of other public media. But as I always say, our belief is that all public companies should follow the path of privatization.”

The decision was made by the newly minted chief of staff, Guillermo Francos, as part of a larger restructuring of the president’s cabinet. 

“What I’m saying is nothing new,” Adorni continued. “Everything we said that we were going to do, we are now doing, according to what politics and the law allow. We are moving forward. Telám has been in the process of being dismantled since we first made our announcement.”

On March 4, Télam’s offices were closed, with police officers stationed in front to prevent workers from entering. Those staffers were placed on leave, and the agency’s website was shut down as well.

Founded in 1945, Télam employed upwards of 700 journalists as Argentina’s largest news service. Milei has called the organization a “Kirchnerist propaganda agency” — a reference to former President and Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kircher and her late husband, the former president, Nestor Kirchner.

Since Milei assumed office in December of last year, Argentina has slid 26 slots in the World Freedom Press Index, from 40 to 66. In its report, Reporters Without Borders referred to the president as “openly hostile to the media” and a figure who “poses a disturbing new threat to the right to information in the country.”

Argentina currently ranks above its South American neighbors Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay (82, 124, and 115, respectively) but below Uruguay (51) and Chile (52).