Rethinking Debates on Media and Police Reform in Argentina By Michelle D. Bonner This a near final draft of the article published on line 2015, Policing and Society (will appear in a print volume of the journal in late 2016) Abstract Despite their documented involvement in the last military dictatorship, the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) has not undergone a substantial reform since the return of electoral democracy in 1983. In 2010, members of the PFA were accused of killing two protesters in Indoamericano Park. Media coverage of this incident led to a policy window for the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner government to pursue the first significant attempt to reform the PFA. This article explores media coverage of these reforms. Both practitioners and scholars, recognize that the media play a role in police reform. It is usually viewed as either impeding police reforms by supporting iron fist policing or facilitating reforms through supporting civil rights policing. But what happens when media frames are more ambiguous than this division suggests? Populist regimes commonly use ambiguous language strategically and use the media in distinctive ways, both of which complicate our understanding of easy iron fist versus civil rights policing frames and their impact. Through an analysis of newspaper coverage of the 2010‐13 reform effort in Argentina this article aims to better understand this ambiguity. Keywords: police reform, media, Argentina, populism