![]() The government’s policy pendulum has now arguably touched on the opposite extreme. Ever since the farming conflict of 2008, the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner understood reality was not enough to capture the public’s imagination and placed much of its political efforts on “the narrative” of reality. The government’s media and information policy continues on pre-reelection automatic pilot. “A brief statement,” “lasting less than 15 minutes,” “taking no questions,” was some of the language printed by the daily Página12 the day after the accident as it reported on Schiavi’s media appearance (). When one of the staunchest supporters of the government’s policies in the press ranks notes three times in a story without a byline that the Transport Secretary’s press conference was “short” and mentions that “no questions were allowed,” there is no need to read between the lines to understand there are some cracks in the government’s public communications practices. But the fact that the Transport Secretary’s first talking-point on a day of televised tragedy in a downtown morning train was an effort to explicitly push for the government’s own terminology might be seen as a sign of semiotic obsession rather than virtue. There is nothing wrong with that, at least technically. The government is, as most governments are, obsessed with the public interpretation of reality. “The word accident also exists,” noted Schiavi. And he said he wanted to coin his own terms to the chain of signs: responsibility and accident. Some TV channels, said Schiavi, were using those words on their screens to frame the situation. ![]() ![]() Schiavi said three words were defining the moment: tragedy, disaster and pain. The first thing he did, even before expressing official condolences, was media semiotics. Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi was the first official in the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration to face the cameras and speak to the public in the aftermath of the Once train slaughter. By Marcelo García,* en The Buenos Aires Herald
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