Mexico's Narco Televisa Scandal: The Impunity of the Elite Daniel Hopsicker - MadCow Morning News
go to original October 29, 2012

Televisa's Emilio Azcárraga Jean (L) and President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto. (Cuartoscuro)
 
Even as he prepares to take office in a month, a mushrooming scandal in Mexico threatens that country’s new President, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Some call it Mexico’s Watergate; the comparison might even be apt.

Like Watergate - which picked up momentum only after Richard Nixon had won the ’72 Presidential election - the Narco Televisa Scandal is heating up just before Pena Nieto takes office.

Watergate had a largely unexplored Mexican connection. The Narco Televisa Scandal has an American angle. Both scandals involve drug money.

And therein lies the rub, explaining why reaction in the U.S. - despite billions of US taxpayer dollars pouring into the black hole of Mexico's drug war - has been a studied and exceedingly mild indifference.

“It has become known as the case of the “fake journalists,” read the lead in a recent wire report about the case distributed to American newspapers.

But this is untrue. No one in Mexico - where Televisa’s guilty involvement is almost a given - is calling it that. It is the Narco-Televisa Scandal.

Thousands of posts on Twitter discuss what happened to 18 Mexicans busted in Nicaragua driving a half-dozen satellite TV vans from Televisa.

They are at #Narco-Televisa. On the other hand, at #fake journalists, there is just one. It reads: “I love #fake journalists… You don't know how to write and wouldn't know a real story if it bit you in the ass.”

It is a small point, but telling.

Why no skepticism?

There is good reason to maintain a healthy skepticism about pronouncements by Mexico’s new President, and by Televisa as well, because both Pena Nieto and Televisa are involved in major recent scandals.

August also saw the arrest in Spain of a lieutenant for the Sinaloa Cartel whose day job was as a party functionary for Pena Nieto’s PRI. Worse, Celaya had posted pictures of himself hanging out with Mexico’s new President on Facebook.

Televisa and Pena Nieto together were also enmeshed in a scandal together. The Guardian published documents showing Televisa committing dirty tricks against other candidates to help Pena Nieto win the Mexico presidency, and - in a blatant pay for play scheme which listed fees for various services on offer - raising Peña Nieto's national profile while he was governor of the state of Mexico.

And Wikileaks released cables from the American Embassy in Mexico recently illustrating US concerns that the Mexican presidential election frontrunner had been paying for favorable TV coverage.

So why is a US reporter stationed in Mexico City, where all this is well-known, calling it - while providing no evidence to back the claim - the “fake journalists” scandal?

Read more at MadCow Morning News

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!