BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Argentina's government on Saturday gave one of its leading media critics, Grupo Clarin, a deadline to sell off most of its broadcast stations, saying Dec. 7 will mark the day when media monopolies will no longer be able to put themselves above the law.

Clarin, which owns 240 cable systems, 10 radio stations and four TV channels in addition to its flagship daily newspaper, has challenged the 2009 media law's anti-monopoly clauses limiting the number of stations any one company can own as unconstitutional.

Clarin, a bitter opponent of President Cristina Fernandez, says many legal scholars support its position that even if its injunction expires on Dec. 7, it should have another year to divest.

In a lengthy TV spot that began airing during Saturday's much-watched football games, the government called the deadline date "7D" and said it would bring "diversity and democracy" to Argentina's media.

It announced that it will immediately put Grupo Clarin's cable TV stations up for public auction on that date if Clarin hasn't already complied with the law. The spot said jobs would be preserved and that transferring the licenses to new owners would foster more points of view.

Anticipating fresh waves of accusations that it is trying to silence dissent, the spot said: "The Argentine state will not expropriate the news media; the Argentine state will not nationalize the news media. The Argentine state will guarantee their jobs and compliance with a law that democratizes the news media in the Argentine republic."

But Clarin called it an illegal manoeuvr to attack anyone who challenges official doctrine, and cited its comprehensive coverage last week of the largest anti-government protests Argentina has seen in years.

"The government announced this nine days after Grupo Clarin's media outlets were nearly the only ones who covered the massive mobilizations and 'cacerolazos' against the government, while media that depend directly or indirectly on the government decided to ignore or minimize these protests, in co-ordination with the line that came down from the Casa Rosada," Clarin said on its newspaper site.

Fernandez has used nearly every tool of government power at her disposal to attack Clarin, which devotes much of every newspaper and news program to criticism of nearly everything she does. The paper's publisher, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, faced illegal adoption accusations for years until DNA tests finally showed no link to a database of victims of the 1970s military junta.

But executives of Grupo Clarin and another leading critic, La Nacion, still face a potential trial on human rights violations for allegedly conspiring with the dictators to control Argentina's only newsprint provider. Both papers also have gone to court to block a government attempt to take over the newsprint supply.