Journalism in Mexico Is Sick from Receiving Government Money Dario Ramirez - Sinembargo
go to original December 18, 2015

Mexican journalism is suffering from public money, a willingness to be close to power, a lack of ethics, and from putting non-journalistic interests ahead of the interest and service of the public. The truth is that these ancient practices within journalism impede the vigorous renovation and adaptation that will lead to a different Mexico.

The disease is not minor. It’s not an issue of private companies or business models; rather it is one that covers a public sphere: the right to information. It’s an open secret how the big and small media outlets voluntarily move towards power in order to live off of it. There are no written rules, but rather codes and attitudes through which the powerful award or punish. Journalism moves to a secondary level and its devaluation implicates it in being a weapon to gain money or make propaganda, and rarely is it journalism.

It’s incredible that telephone calls to the press and to journalists from the Mexican president’s office still happen. I have close friends that have confirmed to me first hand that they have been told “they are banned” because of their informative coverage on the country's government. The ban consists of the impossibility of accessing the banquet of millions of pesos that the government spends discretionarily on publicity. We are still in the time that the one who bans feels that it’s his money and with it he can do whatever he pleases. Including censoring - let’s not kid around, it’s a question of censorship - by way of money.

The problem is so bad that there are few forms of media that would be able to survive if public money stopped flowing. More than half of the press live off of public money. The disease is called public money. In the face of the lack of transparence and criteria for its distribution, the press blurs its purpose in order to become nothing more than agents of publicity.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Joel Cloke

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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