Televisa Reporter Fired After Video Catches Him Taking Cash from Mexican Drug Lord Tim Johnson - McClatchy
go to original September 24, 2014

Vigilante groups have driven the Knights Templar drug cartel from many towns in Michoacan state. This photo was taken May 7 in the city of Apatzingan. (Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times)

MEXICO CITY — A choppy clandestine video that surfaced Monday is likely to reinforce the widespread impression that the country’s drug cartels have gained a solid foothold in the Mexican news media.

The video (below), displayed on the website of the MVS radio network, shows two prominent journalists in the troubled state of Michoacan meeting with the fugitive leader of the Knights Templar drug cartel, Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, and holding an animated friendly discussion with him. At the end, they accept a pile of bills.

One of the journalists, Eliseo Caballero Ramirez, was until midday the correspondent in Michoacan for the powerful Televisa network, the biggest mass media company in the Spanish-speaking world.

Caballero told MVS radio host Carmen Aristegui that he was forced to attend the meeting with “La Tuta” against his will, an argument that a parade of political figures also have made after videos of their meetings with him have leaked to the public.

But the images of Caballero and another journalist, Jose Luis Diaz, accepting payoffs, then pleading for more, was too much for Televisa, which fired Caballero.

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