Uproar In Mexico Over Government Censorship in Latest Journalist Scandal Karla Zabludovsky - BuzzFeed
go to original March 26, 2016

The original article (left) and the one that was altered after government officials complained. (Eme Equis/m-x.com.mx)

A reporter and deputy news director at a national newspaper in Mexico have quit over allegations of government censorship, a reaction to the latest in a series of attempts to sweep negative coverage out of sight during Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration.

The newspaper, Milenio, had published a five month-long investigation into an expensive anti-hunger government program on March 7. The front page story, titled “The (False) Success of the National Crusade Against Hunger,” was produced by a team led by reporter Karen Cota, who analyzed more than 300,000 databases and concluded that the program funds were used haphazardly, leaving more than 60% of people in the poorest states without coverage.

The next day, Secretary of Social Development Rosario Robles Berlanga visited the paper’s newsroom and met with its editor-in-chief, Carlos Marín, as well as Cota and another member of the paper’s data unit, Milenio DataLab. According to Cota, Marín said the conversation with Robles Berlanga would be off the record.

“We defended the investigation point by point which provoked annoyance, anger and several hand slaps on the table on the part of the [Social Development Secretariat] officials,” Cota wrote in a piece published on Medium last week. When she returned to her desk, Cota wrote, the story and several Facebook and Twitter promotional posts had been taken down. And “(False)” had been removed from the title.

A day after Robles Berlanga’s visit, Milenio published a new story expounding the anti-hunger program’s accomplishments and downplaying Cota’s critical conclusions. The new findings were attributed to the National Statistics and Geography Institute.

Read the rest at BuzzFeed

Related: Mexico Press Freedom: Journalists Live in Fear and Government Doesn't Protect Them (Mexico Voices)

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