An angry president who makes a journalist’s telephone number public because he asked him too difficult questions. The angry president is Mexico’s López Obrador. The journalist in question is from The New York Times.
It was both surreal and unsurprising: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who in his daily press conference lashed out at the press for daring to take a critical look at his performance and past. AMLO, as the abbreviation for the president goes, does this often. But with directly sharing the phone number of The New York Times-correspondent Natalie Kitroeff, a new low was reached.
The American newspaper wrote how the US had been investigating for years into meetings that the president’s political allies allegedly had with drug cartel leaders in the run-up to the 2018 presidential elections, which AMLO would win. Cartel leaders are also said to have paid money to be released from prison. As befits journalistic adversarial hearing, sent The New York Times a list of questions for the president.
It was that list of questions with the correspondent’s number that AMLO shared publicly on Thursday during his mañaneraa daily press speech that the president increasingly uses to attack the national and international press. The New York Times was a “rag,” and had no right to investigate. Their investigation was “an insult to Mexico.”
“A worrying and unacceptable tactic from a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are increasing,” he said. The New York Times, who subsequently published the research – without any objection. The White House denied investigating the Mexican president but said it disapproved of the action against the correspondent. YouTube has removed the press conference from its channels. And the Mexican version of the Dutch Data Protection Authority has launched an investigation to see whether the privacy law had been violated by the president.
The fuss does not seem to bother López Obrador, who is in the final months of his presidency and remains as popular as ever. “Then she will change her telephone number, right?” the president said to a critical Mexican journalist a day later. The details of the journalist who questioned him were also on the street a few hours later.
Mexico is the most dangerous country for journalists in the world – excluding countries at war. According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 55 journalists have been killed since 2018. This often involved journalists writing about drug violence, the subject being investigated by The New York Times. The president doesn’t seem concerned about it. Anyone who writes critically about the government is called a “hypocrite” or a “puppet” of big money.
Data of journalists in Mexico appears to be unprotected: in January, personal data, including addresses and passport copies, of hundreds of journalists were stolen from government computers. The government promised an investigation. As with the many murders of journalists in recent years, it is not clear what “an investigation” entails and when and whether justice will be served. And anyone who denounces this can be publicly slaughtered by the president, by far the most powerful man in Mexico.