The relationship between the Mexican government and the press has deteriorated with López Obrador
The situation of the press in Mexico has worsened in the almost four months that Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been president of that country, a period in which six journalists were killed, the Inter American Press Association (SIP) reported Saturday.
"With the beginning of a new Administration, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the relationship with the media has deteriorated considerably," says the report on Mexico presented by the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information at its meeting. of half a year that is celebrated in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia).
According to the report, read by the director of the Editorial Organization Mexicana (OEM), Martha Ramos, the Government of López Obrador, which began on December 1, has taken measures that affect official advertising in the media without explaining the plan or social communication strategy that served as the basis for preparing the budgets for the sector in 2019.
The SIP also referred to the entry into force, on January 1, of the General Law of Social Communication (LGCS), voted during the previous Administration and "that allows discretion in the exercise of public resources."
"This law was criticized at the time because it does not contain sufficient controls in terms of social communication, a situation that encourages the proselytizing use of public money," the report adds.
Also, remember that on January 29 were published in the Official Gazette the bases for the registration and authorization of communication and promotion and publicity programs of the Federal Government for the year 2019, a document that does not make clear the criteria with which audiences, circulation and penetration of media to grant official publicity will be measured.
"The lack of clarity on this issue has not been the only stumbling block in the way" of the press, the report indicates, echoing "a prosecutorial prosecutorial prosecution for its critical line" denounced by the newspaper Reforma.
At the same time, he points out that reporters covering "the morning" daily press conference of the president, "have been agreed to avoid questions out of time."
In relation to the journalists murdered in Mexico since López Obrador is in the Presidency, the IAPA laments the official silence and the impunity that surrounds the cases.
"There has been no official pronouncement about the five journalists killed since López Obrador took office despite fighting the crimes against journalists was a campaign promise," he says.
Among those murdered are the journalist Jesús Alejandro Márquez Jiménez, a reporter with a red chronicle and a contributor to various media outlets in Nayarit, whose body was found on a highway on the morning of December 1, 2018, hours before López Obrador took office. .
Founder of the digital media Orión Informativo, Márquez "was highly critical of local public servants and officials," the IAPA report adds.
Others killed in this period are Diego García Corona, a reporter for the weekly Morelos (December 6); Rafael Murúa Manríquez, director of a community radio station in the state of Baja California Sur (January 21), and Jesús Eugenio Ramos Rodríguez, host of the news program Nuestra Región Hoy, of Oye 99.9 FM station, in the state of Tabasco (9 February).
The list is completed by Santiago Barroso Alfaro, host of the program "Buenos días San Luis" on the radio station Río Digital and director of the RED 653 digital newspaper in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora state (March 15), and sports journalist Omar Iván Camacho, whose body was found under a bridge in the municipality of Salvador Alvarado (Sinaloa), on March 25.
That same day López Obrador presented the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, but "this is the same protection system that has been in place since the last six years," the SIP clarified.
"In this period, six journalists have been murdered, in a couple of cases there were detainees, but the motives for the crime have not been made public." In other cases, and as seems to be the custom, the authorities rushed to disqualify the victims. above strengthening research, "the document adds.
