Argentina’s President Javier Milei restored credentialed journalists’ access to his government headquarters, the Casa Rosada, on Monday after a decision to block reporters that sparked backlash from lawmakers and press freedom advocates. The restoration came more than a week after authorities barred credentialed reporters from the building, a move that media coverage said was accompanied by a volley of online insults from within the government’s orbit.
Most journalists told reporters they could enter the Casa Rosada—Argentina’s equivalent of the White House—for the first time since April 23. But authorities also denied entry to two credentialed TV channels without explanation and imposed new restrictions inside the building, including shuttering corridors and putting frosted glass on windows, according to the AP report.
The episode followed criticism over last month’s closure of a press room used for decades by credentialed reporters covering the president. The AP report said the reopening of access and the new internal constraints were part of a wider pattern of attacks and reprisals against news organizations that Milei’s critics link to the president’s hostility toward the press.
In a rare news conference Monday, Milei’s cabinet chief Manuel Adorni responded to the backlash. Adorni said he aimed “not to welcome anyone, but to restore the (press) room’s operations,” and told reporters the government was “fully in favor of press freedom,” while saying it would not allow “acts endangering national security” to be carried out “behind its back.”
Adorni said the government introduced restrictions for the roughly 60 members of the Casa Rosada press corps as necessary security measures. The AP report said authorities accused a local TV channel of espionage after it used smart glasses to film parts of the headquarters without authorization, prompting the tighter controls on coverage.
Todo Noticias, the channel mentioned by AP, disputed the authorities’ characterization. The AP report said Todo Noticias insisted it had received official permission to capture the footage and argued that the images of corridors and meeting spaces shown in its segment had long been accessible to the public.
When asked why journalists from Todo Noticias and Channel 13 were still blocked from the Casa Rosada on Monday, Adorni said he was not aware of the issue. In principle, AP reported him as saying that there “shouldn’t be any limitations.”
Adorni also defended the internal changes AP described as abrupt and highly visible to reporters. Those measures included extensive security checks at the entrance, hastily erected barriers that blocked stairwells and hallways, frosted glass obscuring views of a balcony, and rules requiring journalists to hand over their press passes to authorities when leaving the building. Adorni said the government was “simply enforcing the regulations” and told reporters, “This is not censoring freedom of expression.”
Critics said the episode deepened long-running tensions between Milei’s government and news media. The AP report noted that Argentina’s ranking on a press freedom index maintained by Reporters Without Borders has fallen sharply over the past two years, dropping from 66 to 98—one of the biggest declines in South America.
Reporters Without Borders said last week it recorded a “rise in government hostility toward and pressure on the press” from Trump’s most vocal Latin American supporters, including Milei and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. In its account, it said “insults, defamation, and threats” from Milei’s administration toward journalists and media critical of the government have become commonplace since he took office.
Milei has repeatedly attacked news coverage on social media, the AP report said, including posting on X the slogan “We don’t hate journalists enough” nearly every day. Late Monday, AP said he also used social media to castigate those who “accuse us of censorship and violations of freedom of speech,” and wrote that, in a libertarian free market, “society itself would take care of cleaning the system by bankrupting media outlets that constantly publish falsehoods.”