BERKELEY REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

1 Fighting for a Free Press

Throughout her career as one of the most inf luential journalists in modern Mexican history, Carmen Aristegui has used her voice

and inf luence to denounce abuses of power, human rights violations, corruption in public and private entities, and even the censorship imposed against journalists in Mexico, which has become one of the most dangerous countries in which to practice the profession. According to the country’s official human rights organization, the Comisión Nacional de Derecho Humanos, more than 100 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000. In April 2017, Aristegui came to the University of California at Berkeley to speak about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and to share ideas about how the Mexican news media has perceived the administration’s actions on immigration and the hostility that has taken hold of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States.

Her presentation at Sibley Auditorium, “Trump from the Mexican Perspective,” gathered an audience of 300 and included a question-and-answer session with the award-winning journalist Lowell Bergman, who leads the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. During her visit to UC Berkeley, Aristegui also discussed the threats against journalism and freedom of expression in Mexico and the impunity that prevails in most of the cases of murdered journalists. Despite being censored on several occasions, Aristegui’s quest to practice independent and critical journalism has been ongoing: more than a decade ago, she exposed Father Marcial Maciel’s sexual abuse of minors, and she has been unyielding in her in-depth investigation of recent presidential corruption scandals. Among the most well-remembered attempts to silence Aristegui are two cases that involved the presidency in

Fighting for a Free Press in MexicoBy Marcos Martinez Chacón

JOURNALISMMemorial for Sinaloa journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, slain by gunmen in May 2017.

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Mexico. Both cases occurred while she was the host of the four-hour morning radio news program “Primera Emisión,” aired by a Mexico City-based station owned and operated by MVS Comunicaciones. MVS is Mexican media conglomerate with interests in radio, television, and Internet that broadcasts internationally in countries throughout Latin America as well as the United States. Aristegui first tangled with the presidential power in 2011, after a group of opposition legislators took the floor of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies to question the health of President Felipe Calderón. In their brief statements, they alleged that Calderón suffered from alcoholism. The day after the legislators’ comments, Aristegui mentioned the event on her program. She stated that Mexican citizens had the right to know about the president’s health and asked the office of the president to address the accusations brought by the legislators. She was fired almost immediately by the station, under the accusation from the company’s executives that she had violated the code of ethics by spreading rumors about the president. The station also asked her to issue a public apology to the president, a request that she steadfastly refused. Instead, Aristegui defended her decision to include the

story on her show because it was newsworthy and relevant for Mexican society. The public outcry that arose after her dismissal and the pressure she and her team exerted through various press conferences eventually forced MVS to reinstate her. Through the remaining years of the Calderon presidency, Aristegui’s presence on “Primera Emisión” remained unchallenged. However, her tenure ended abruptly in March 2015, now under the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose term in office has been dogged by accusations of corruption and concern about the country’s poor economic growth. One of the cases that has stirred up Peña’s presidency the most was an investigation produced by Aristegui’s team of journalists who delved into the purchase of a mansion by the president’s wife, Angélica Rivera. The $7 million home was bought from a government contractor who also happened to be a longtime friend of the president. The so-called “Casa Blanca” scandal sparked public outcry amid accusations of potential conflict of interest between the presidency and Grupo Higa, owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa, the businessman who had sold the house to the First Lady.

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Carmen Aristegui speaks at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission panel on freedom of expression in Mexico.

BERKELEY REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

3 Fighting for a Free Press

Aristegui has stated publicly that the investigation was censored by MVS and that she was asked by the chief executives of MVS to refrain from presenting the story as part of the station’s programming. She agreed to not present the original investigation on “Primera Emisión,” but instead came up with a strategy to release the story through a concerted collaboration with international and Mexican media outlets. “We had to share the contents of the investigation with the media outlets to which we had presented the story. To generate the most impact with the story, we decided to publish it through other publications,” Aristegui said. Even though Aristegui and her team had kept their promise of not releasing the story through MVS, two of the reporters who had led the Casa Blanca investigation were dismissed by the broadcasting company four months after the story was published. According to the station’s executives, the reporters were fired for using the MVS brand without authorization of the company’s leadership during the launch of a whistleblower website called Méxicoleaks.

When Aristegui demanded that the reporters be reinstated to their jobs, MVS terminated her contract instead. Gradually, her entire team was notified of their dismissal. “What I tell MVS is that the reinstatement of Daniel Lizárraga and Irving Huerta [the reporters] … is an irrevocable condition for going forward,” Aristegui said on what would be her final appearance on her own morning show. Since they were fired, Aristegui and her team of journalists have remained off the air, despite public outcry. Under the initiative of one of the reporters who collaborated with the Casa Blanca investigation, Aristegui and the team chronicled their efforts to report the story and the fallout that ensued in “La Casa Blanca de Peña Nieto,” published by Penguin Random House in 2015. After the book was released, Joaquín Vargas, the owner of MVS, sued Aristegui under allegations of “moral damages.” In the book’s prologue, Aristegui wrote that the owners of the station had “finally succumbed to pressure and compromises of a power that

Enrique Peña Nieto with the CEO of MVS Comunicaciones, Joaquín Vargas Guajardo, in 2014.

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they had faced earlier with dignity and courage.” In November 2016, a judge in Mexico City ruled against Aristegui, saying that she had erred in excessive use of freedom of expression. The judge sentenced the publisher and Aristegui to include an extract of the ruling in every new edition of the book that is published. “The fear of lawsuits is also a way of silencing journalists in Mexico. I’ve refrained from publishing more books for that very reason,” Aristegui said. Today, Aristegui hosts a nightly news show on CNN en Español, and despite the hurdles, she is still fighting in court to be reinstated to her position as the host of “Primera Emisión.” In the meantime, she has launched a groundbreaking online news show called “Aristegui en Vivo” (Aristegui Live). The four-hour show follows the same format she had on “Primera Emisión.” Aristegui often presents exclusive investigations and has discussion panels about the most pressing issues affecting Mexico: corruption, violence, and abuse of power. “Aristegui en Vivo” is the only news program produced exclusively for online platforms in Mexico. The show is distributed through a daily webcast on Aristegui’s own website, Aristegui Noticias, which has become one of the most reliable sources for news in Mexico. “We’re back with all of you. We all know that Mexico is going through one of its worst crossroads. Mexican society needs to take charge of its own reality and start telling its own story in a different way. For the time that we live in now, we need free and independent journalism,” Aristegui said during the launch of her online show in January 2017.

Carmen Aristegui is a broadcast journalist with a wide radio and television presence in Mexico and Latin America. She has received numerous awards, including Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Periodismo and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.

Marcos Martinez Chacón received a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in May 2017.

The event held on April 21, 2017 was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, the Investigative Reporting Program, Ivonne del Valle and Estelle Tarica of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists UC Berkeley Chapter, and the Mexican Association of Students at UC Berkeley.

Carmen Aristegui on the Berkeley campus, April 2017.Ph

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