Mexico’s freedom of knowledge institute, a authorities company, mentioned Thursday that it might begin an investigation into the president’s disclosure on nationwide tv of the private cellphone variety of a journalist for The New York Occasions.
The investigation facilities on a choice by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador throughout a televised information convention on Thursday that left many aghast in Mexico, one of many deadliest nations on the earth for journalists. Not less than 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006, in response to the Committee to Defend Journalists.
In the course of the information convention, Mr. López Obrador learn aloud from an e-mail from Natalie Kitroeff, The New York Occasions’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested remark for an article revealing that U.S. legislation enforcement officers had for years been wanting into claims that allies of Mr. López Obrador met with and took thousands and thousands of {dollars} from drug cartels.
Along with railing in opposition to Ms. Kitroeff and figuring out her by identify, Mr. López Obrador publicly recited her cellphone quantity.
“That is tantamount to doxxing, unlawful by Mexican privateness legal guidelines and locations reporters in danger,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico consultant for the Committee to Defend Journalists, mentioned on X, the social media platform.
Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Transparency, Entry to Info and Private Information Safety, or INAI, mentioned in a statement that its investigation would search to determine whether or not Mr. López Obrador had violated Mexican laws defending private knowledge. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of knowledge system, which was created greater than 20 years in the past to make authorities operations extra clear and curb abuses of energy.
Mr. López Obrador, whose six-year time period is coming to an finish this yr, has lengthy maintained a confrontational relationship with the information media and recurrently assaults journalists by identify at his morning information conferences.
The transfer in opposition to a journalist for The Occasions follows weeks of attacks on a reporter for ProPublica. It printed a narrative final month detailing a separate investigation into accusations that drug cartels had donated thousands and thousands to Mr. López Obrador’s unsuccessful presidential marketing campaign in 2006. The president known as the reporter, Tim Golden, a “pawn” and “a mercenary within the service” of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Occasions’s article on Thursday revealed a more moderen inquiry throughout Mr. López Obrador’s presidency, which began in 2018. American legislation enforcement officers spent years wanting into claims that confidants of Mr. López Obrador had obtained thousands and thousands of {dollars} from drug cartels whereas he ran the nation, the article revealed.
However as an alternative of talking to The Occasions concerning the American inquiry, the president determined to launch Ms. Kitroeff’s cellphone quantity on nationwide tv, a very threatening tactic in a rustic the place so many journalists are harassed and killed.
“This can be a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world chief at a time when threats in opposition to journalists are on the rise,” The Occasions mentioned in a statement on Thursday.
The USA by no means opened a proper investigation into Mr. López Obrador, The Occasions reported, and the officers concerned in the end shelved the inquiry after concluding that the U.S. authorities had little urge for food to pursue allegations in opposition to the chief of a key American ally.
Throughout their inquiry, U.S. officers recognized doable hyperlinks between the cartels and Mr. López Obrador’s allies and advisers after he took workplace, however didn’t discover any direct ties between the president himself and prison teams.