Lawsuits Filed Against Mexican Journalists Effect Investigative Reporting, Criticism The New York Times
go to original September 12, 2016

Carmen Aristegui during a meeting with members of the media in Mexico City in July (Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse)

This summer, responding to public outrage over a spate of government corruption scandals, Mexican lawmakers passed a strong anticorruption law that requires public officials to be more transparent about their finances. Whether that will help end Mexico’s culture of cronyism and graft will depend largely on journalists being able to investigate and report about the ruling class.

A recent flurry of specious lawsuits filed against journalists — and a troubling court decision in May that lifted monetary caps on libel damages — are having a chilling effect on investigative reporting and criticism. Of all the challenges that have historically stymied the Mexican press, including violence and a habit of self-censorship to appease advertisers, the unjustified legal exposure journalists now face is a relatively easy one to solve.

Mexican lawmakers could pass a law making it harder for public officials and other public figures to sue for libel. President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has been the target of pay-to-play allegations involving real estate arrangements his family benefited from, would be wise to endorse such a law. It would go a long way toward regaining the trust of an electorate he has given plenty of reasons to question his integrity and judgment.

The most prominent journalist sued recently is Carmen Aristegui, a broadcast journalist who in 2014 led a team that broke the first major story about alleged impropriety by Mr. Peña Nieto. Ms. Aristegui and her colleagues meticulously documented an arrangement under which a construction company that had been awarded lucrative government contracts built a mansion for the president’s wife, Angélica Rivera.

The news organization that employed them at the time, MVS, which depends heavily on government advertising, refused to run the story, according to Ms. Aristegui. The journalists published it independently and later chronicled the saga and its fallout in a book that came out last year. In July, the owner of MVS, Joaquín Vargas, sued Ms. Aristegui, alleging “moral damages.” That lawsuit is one of 10 filed recently against journalists that are being tracked by the Organization of American States.

“This has raised an alarm,” Edison Lanza, the special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the O.A.S., said in an interview. “It seems likely that some public officials are taking advantage of this.”

Read the rest at The New York Times

Related: A Look at the Other Side: Latin American Journalistic Projects Put the Focus on Inequality (International Center for Journalists)

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