The Old Order
At the end of the 1970s, the government strictly controlled information. Daily newspapers, with some notable exceptions, reported what the regime wanted to hear.
Jose Aguilar Rivera, 2003341
The PRI’s system of media control maintained a pliant press into the 1980s. In his 1985 classic, Distant Neighbors, Alan Riding observed that “hundreds” of Mexico City and provincial newspapers received between 60 and 80 percent of their revenue by publishing government handouts as ads or disguised as new stories. This led to extensive coverage promoting the president and his
Administration. Under Lopez Portillo, the Mexico City police chief provided dozens of leading editors and columnists with cars and drivers. Discreet calls from the Interior Ministry guaranteed omission or softer treatment of unwelcome news.342
The results of government largesse were visible in both the quality (favorable) and quantity (voluminous) of PRI political campaign coverage. Journalists covering PRI campaigns received free transportation, food, and rooms in the best hotels as well as envelopes full of cash. In 1994, millions of dollars were paid to large dailies to publish propaganda disguised as news promoting Ernesto Zedillo’s presidential campaign. Government ties were key to financial success in newspaper publishing, while readership was largely incidental. In the mid-1990s, Mexico City’s twenty-three daily newspapers had a combined circulation of fewer than 500,000. Government assistance allowed many of these papers to operate without serious regard to circulation or commercial advertising.343
Not only did journalists fail to question information received from official sources, but they did not view questioning political authority as their role. They supported the status quo and considered themselves part of the governing system and so defended it against attack. Reporters socialized before 1968 portrayed the Mexican political system as a unique species of democracy suited to post-revolutionary Mexican society. The PRI was considered the only valid representative of Mexican society. Given this perspective, the press focused on incumbents and PRI-affiliated organizations, while largely ignoring independent civil associations and opposition political parties.344
The New Order
In the nineties, television, radio and the newspapers expanded and diversified significantly, reflecting the diversity of Mexican opinion for the first time and reinforcing political pluralism.
Soledad Loaeza, 2 0 0 6 345
The press freedom Mexico enjoys today can be traced back to the death in 1968 of the editor of Mexico’s flagship newspaper, Excelsior. Even though the paper was considered Mexico’s outstanding paper, it had more in common with Pravda than with the world’s outstanding papers.
The appointment of Julio Scherer Garcia as the new editor of Excelsior initiated a chain of events that changed Mexican journalism forever. Scherer Garcia, who had worked at the paper since 1946 without attracting much attention, soon introduced investigative reporting on topics such as election fraud, government repression, and environmental damage. His goal was not to topple the government but to make visible the illegal activity of the ruling elite. Scherer Garcia assumed that ending impunity began with informing the public of what was happening. Excelsiors newly empowered reporters also investigated the corruption of union leaders and commented on misguided economic policy. The paper ceased to brand as communist-inspired any effort to promote social justice and no longer repeated as divine revelation everything declared by the PRI and the government. Independent academics such as Daniel Cosio Villegas and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (both cited in this book) were invited to write columns.
Excelsior’s independence eventually exceeded President Echeverria’s tolerance. He took advantage of Excelsior’s unique management structure to bring the paper back into Mexico’s sycophantic journalistic chorus. The paper had been organized as a cooperative, which chose its editor, in order to insulate it from outside pressure. With Echeverria’s backing, some conservative reporters and printers packed a meeting of the cooperative with goons and voted Scherer Garcia out of the editorship. More than 200 writers, reporters, and photographers then walked out of the paper in
Protest.346
After Scherer Garcia’s ouster, those who seized control of Excelsior scrambled to hire a new staff—a staff that included Eduardo Borrell, who had served as minister of education under Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The formerly proud paper became a pro-government rag that began a slow descent into insolvency and irrelevance.347
Government influence over the media was so strong that Scherer Garcia’s ouster was hardly commented on by other newspapers. The following statement did appear in one of the few spaces remaining open to critical comment, La cultura en Mexico, a supplement to the magazine Siempre! It was signed by a long list of intellectuals including Elena Poniatowska, Eduardo del Rio, Carlos Monsivais, Enrique Krauze, and Lorenzo Meyer:
The Excelsior which Scherer Garcia edited will remain in the annals of Mexican journalism as the richest, most fertile journalist experience of the last decade. It is a triumphal monument to journalistic professionalism and an attempt to report in an informed, uninhibited, free manner.348
Rather than remaining silent, Scherer Garcia soon founded a weekly news magazine, Proceso, which began to publish outspoken journalism of a quality that Mexico had not seen since the advent of PRI rule. The magazine was so hard-hitting that historian Enrique Krauze commented that it was more effective than the Secretaria de la Contraloria, a cabinet-level agency established to combat corruption. It repeatedly denounced financial impropriety and published proof of its occurrence. Ironically, the coverage provided by Proceso on topics such as electoral fraud, repression, environmental damage, and biased media coverage was even more hard-hitting than that provided by Excelsior under Scherer Garcia. In 1978, Octavio Paz took advantage of Proceso’s openness to observe:
For almost 30 years, between 1930 and 1960, most Mexicans were sure of the path we were following. Such certainty has now vanished, and many are wondering if we should begin again. . . . Economic problems are severe and have not been resolved. Rather, inflation and unemployment are increasing. It is also clear, that, despite our wealth, poverty has not disappeared.349
For decades Proceso remained as the most widely circulated, most influential political weekly in Mexico. However, after Scherer Garcia retired in 1996, its circulation declined from 200,000 to
70,000, and it faced increasing competition from other newsmagazines such as Este Pais, Milenio Semenal, and Voz y Voto. It also faced increased competition from the increasingly independent electronic media.350
Eight years after the founding of Proceso, a new paper La Jornada was founded in Mexico City. The newly founded paper gained stature with its extensive coverage and photos of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. Later it became the basic source of information on student movements based at the National University, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas’s 1988 presidential candidacy, the PRD, and the 1994 Chiapas rebellion. As a result of its coverage of the 1988 elections, La Jornada’s circulation more than doubled to almost 100,000 and then rose again with its extensive coverage of the 1994 Chiapas uprising. Rather than buttressing incumbent regimes, La Jornada sought to change them. La Jornada director general Carmen Lira commented: “La Jornada has believed—and has never ceased believing—in the possibility of a more just, civil country, and in citizens’ rights and duty to demand such a country and initiate change. In short, in the possibility of change in our country.”351
While independent journalism was taking root in Mexico City, 500 miles to the north a parallel process began in Monterrey when, in 1973, twenty-four-year-old Alejandro Junco inherited a sleepy, family-run provincial paper, El Norte. He prohibited his reporters from taking bribes or commissions from subjects covered and made this feasible by paying salaries well above those paid reporters at other papers. El Norte’s drab appearance was made over through the widespread use of color and attractive layout. Most significantly, El Norte began publishing real news. For example, when Monterrey held mayoral elections, observers were posted at each polling place to record the number of voters. When the PRI claimed more votes than there had been voters, El Norte published the figures it had gathered.352
Given its improved coverage and layout, the paper’s circulation increased from 30,000 to
145,000, making it the most important paper in northern Mexico. In the early 1990s, not only had El Norte’s circulation increased but its private ad sales were higher than those of any other Mexican newspaper—a fact not lost on other publishers.353
Rather than rest on his laurels, Junco plunged into the much more competitive Mexico City market. He invested $50 million of his family’s money in a new paper, Reforma. The paper embraced the strong elements of El Norte, including a jazzy layout splashed with color and sophisticated graphics.
Reforma’s coverage, which reflected its link to El Norte, included reporting on corruption and election fraud. Management refused to publish government propaganda disguised as news and prohibited reporters from selling ads. Reforma emphasized the publication of opinion polls, which indicated if a policy was disliked or if a PRI candidate lacked support and was therefore highly unlikely to win. If it was known that a PRI candidate lacked support, the political cost of rigging elections increased. Since they received some of the highest salaries in the industry, $1,500 to $3,000 a month, Reforma reporters were not forced into seeking government funds in exchange for favorable coverage. By 2002, the paper had a circulation of 126,000, despite the PRI-dominated newspaper vendors’ union refusing to sell it, and was considered the most influential paper in Mexico.354
The success of El Norte, Reforma, La Jornada, and Proceso paved the way for more independent journalism throughout Mexico. Alejandro Junco founded other newspapers, such as Mural in Guadalajara and Palabra in Saltillo. By 2000, the Junco chain employed 1,070 reporters and published 460,000 newspapers a day. Other papers, ranging from El Diario de Yucatan in Merida to Zeta in Tijuana, also plunged into critical journalism. Various papers in Mexico City began more independent coverage. El Financiero published a series of stories on economic policy, drug trafficking, official corruption, and electoral fraud before other papers dared such coverage. Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, the owner of El Universal, published a paper so drab that it appeared unchanged since its founding in 1916. He admitted that his paper was steeped in “a culture of submission.” The example of Reforma, however, galvanized Ealy into change. He added color photos and independent coverage and even hired reporters away from other independent papers. Such a shift was not accepted graciously by the existing political order. Ealy was subjected to tax audits and arrested on charges of tax evasion, all but one of which was eventually thrown out in court.355
By 2000, Mexico’s media had evolved from a closed, corrupt, establishment-oriented press to a reasonably vigorous Fourth Estate. There was regular coverage of official repression, corruption, lying, impunity, and electoral fraud. This independence did not emerge overnight, but was the product of more than two decades of learning and struggle.356