La Plata, December 1, 2025 – Total News Agency (TNA) – The use of official advertising in the province of Buenos Aires has returned to the center of the controversy after it became known that Governor Axel Kicillof awarded, between January and September of this year, nearly $2.5 billion to the multimedia group El Destape, owned by Roberto Navarro.
In parallel, the discussion about the role of state advertising continues in a year where the provincial economy faces a strong deterioration and the demand for public services intensifies. Meanwhile, the political impact of these revelations is already being felt: the debate on the relationship between media and power is gaining strength again, fueled by the suspicion that official advertising, far from being an institutional communication tool, continues to function as a strategic instrument to protect and amplify the ruling party's narrative.
They point out that the discretion in the distribution of official advertising can distort the media ecosystem by benefiting aligned actors and discouraging plurality, especially when combining millionaire amounts with a provincial economic situation marked by budgetary restrictions and social urgencies.
The Buenos Aires administration has not yet responded to the questions about the volume of funds allocated to El Destape or to the requests for greater transparency in the award criteria.
At the same time, numerous public works are postponed or paralyzed due to lack of funds, while essential services such as health, transportation, and educational infrastructure show signs of collapse in numerous municipalities. Opposition leaders and public policy experts agree that the allocation of resources must prioritize critical needs over strengthening partisan communication structures.
This figure, distributed in 121 advertising orders, corresponds exclusively to its two digital platforms—El Destape Web and El Destape Radio—and revives the debate on the impact of public resources on the sustainability of media politically aligned with the provincial government.
El Destape, which also received advertising from the government of Javier Milei during 2024, has been the subject of criticism for its ties to power, especially during Kirchnerism, when its director, Roberto Navarro, became a multimillionaire.
The data comes from public administrative records and confirm that in just nine months, El Destape received $2,490,867,265 from the Buenos Aires provincial budget.
«We have to end that nonsense that only Official Advertising funds the media,» he stated recently, ensuring that state advertising represents «less than 10%» of total income.
However, if that proportion were taken literally, the numbers would lead to a difficult conclusion to sustain: that El Destape's structure would have moved more than $22,000 million in nine months, which would imply daily revenues close to $100 million, of which $90 million would correspond to «private advertising,» as reported by El Disenso.
The absence of a comparable volume of visible advertisers on the medium's platforms has revived suspicions about the veracity of the claim, as well as about the origin and transparency of the financing that sustains its activity.
Analysts of the Buenos Aires media scene maintain that this concentration of public funds is not an isolated fact, but part of a broader scheme of official advertising distribution aimed at strengthening media that maintain a discourse favorable to the provincial government.
The magnitude of the amount quickly contrasted with the statements from the same medium's journalist Ari Lijalad, who downplayed the relevance of state advertising in the financing of allied press.
In the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, insecurity continues to escalate with violent episodes dominating the daily agenda.
This editorial alignment—warns—is expressed both in the minimization of criticisms of Kicillof's management and in the amplification of his political narrative, particularly on platforms that have acquired a militant character.
The situation takes on special relevance in a context where the province faces growing structural difficulties.
