There are 50% more murders of journalists with AMLO than with Peña Nieto and Calderón: Article 19

For Article 19 there is no doubt: the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is already the most violent against journalists and the media since it was recorded.

This was stated this Tuesday at a press conference by Leopoldo Maldonado, director of the civil organization that defends freedom of expression for Mexico and Central America, through his annual report 2021 which he entitled “Denial”, as a critique of the president's speech and his area of communication.

During the first three years of AMLO, 1,945 attacks against the press have been recorded, including the murder of 33 journalists (eight of them so far in 2022) and the disappearance of two more, which means an 85% increase in aggressions and up to 50% murders compared to previous governments. Even in 2021 alone, Article 19 documented 644 attacks; that is, one every 14 hours.

In the first three years of the six-year periods of PRI artist Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) and the pianist Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), there were 19 and 26 murders of journalists, respectively. Those periods, at the time, were considered the most violent for the guild.

“We weren't born three years ago. That is precisely why we know, despite the denial, that today the exercise of freedom of expression has no better conditions than before 2018″

In this regard, he indicated that “denying” the reality that the country is going through leads to the lack of urgent measures to curb the spiral of violence and the attack on democracy and freedom of expression.

In addition, he said that López Obrador uses his morning conference to stigmatize and disqualify journalistic work critical of his policies, which has led to thousands of reporters and opinion leaders having to work in a hostile context.

“Continued violence against the press is the result of absent governments, both current and past ones, which have been unable to prevent violence, to guarantee measures of non-repetition, to investigate crimes against freedom of expression and to repair the damage, and which, on the contrary, directly attack the media through stigma, physical violence and harassment, among other grievances”

This is a discourse that has had a cascading effect in at least 46 cases in which both private and public actors used the same morning speech — such as “fifis”, “chayoteros”, “sold” — at public events inside and outside the country's capital. Of these, 27 took place in Baja California, Sinaloa, Puebla, Guerrero, Aguascalientes, Veracruz and Chihuahua, the organization revealed.

Mexico City with 100 attacks (15.53%); Guerrero with 52 (8.07%); Puebla with 46 (7.14%); Baja California with 44 (6.83%), and Yucatan with 39 (6.06%), are the entities where the most aggressions were recorded. Together, these entities account for 43.63% of attacks on the press.

Added to this is federal government spending on official advertising, which represents an “obstacle” to “media plurality”: only three media outlets account for 33% of total social communication spending in the López Obrador administration, while the first 10 favored media outlets account for 52% of total resources.