By Deborah Van Hoewyk
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO, was elected president of Mexico in 2018, he promised to “fix” many things – from government corruption to cartel violence, from income equality to uneven development. Some have seen progress, some have not.
AMLO keeps Mexicans apprised of his progress with five-day-a-week press conferences that start at 7 am and last 2 hours on average – these are called his mañaneras. Let’s just set aside the question of how the president of the world’s 10th largest population, 12th largest economy, and the 14th largest area, has that much time to spend talking rather than doing. What do the mañaneras contribute to AMLO’s agenda for governing Mexico?
At his daily press conference, AMLO would in theory be discussing the most important issues facing the country, responding to questions from reporters. This represents a sharp departure from previous presidents, who were mostly seen at formal public events if at all – Enrique Peña Nieto, the last president, in particular.
The Mañaneras – How – and What – AMLO Communicates
According to Francisco José de Andrea Sánchez, who holds a doctorate of law from UNAM and serves as principal investigator for UNAM’s Institute for Legal Research, the mañaneras “are the cornerstone of [AMLO’s] communication” with his followers, the people of Mexico, and even members of the government. The mañaneras are a logical outcome of the way AMLO achieved the presidency. Without social media, Andrea Sánchez argues, AMLO would not have been elected – he used social networks to get around “the media monopoly” that would not have argued his case.
The daily press conferences “avoid that same monopoly,” in a way that no other president of a major democracy has managed to do. Andrea Sánchez argues that AMLO’s two previous defeats in the presidential election led him to look for “non-censorable direct communication alternatives” to get around the “monopoly of the written and electronic mass media” that covers Mexican elections. (Earlier, AMLO had staged frequent press conferences as mayor of Mexico City, carried by BBC Mundo.)
In an interview with the LatAm Journalism Review in March of this year, Javier Garza Ramos, an independent Mexican journalist who specializes in security and protection, said the mañaneras “started as an exercise with a lot of promise, a promise of transparency where we hoped that the president would be open and answer questions from the media about important issues. But really within a few months we realized that it had become a propaganda exercise.”
Garza Ramos now describes the mañaneras as “useless,” because they are being used as a “tool of government.” For example, AMLO can put topics on the agenda that turn out “to be so frivolous” that “they absorb a lot of discussion that sometimes we don’t turn to see more important things” – like recent news about corruption or violence: “The president uses [the mañanera] to divert attention” from what he doesn’t want to talk about.
Article 19, an international organization that works to protect freedom of expression, has its hub for Mexico and Central America in Mexico City. They find that the key factor undermining the nature of the morning press conferences is that AMLO only answers questions from journalists seen as favoring his administration.
A Space to Attack Journalists
And what happens when AMLO encounters journalists who ask, when and if they get a chance, critical questions? The mañaneras are widely seen as “favorable spaces for attacking media and journalists, and even for the spread of disinformation.” When a reporter does manage to ask a question that makes AMLO uncomfortable, he is likely to reply “You are vendidos (sell-outs), you are corrupt,” or “You are plotting against the government,” or “You are attacking the government.” He describes his responses as defending the government’s honor and public power.
One of AMLO’s “defense strategies” is “doxing” journalists – that is, he approves of the release of information from personal documents (“dox”), identifying information that, in the case of journalists, encourages harassment and worse. In January of this year, information on all the journalists who attend the mañaneras was released. AMLO said the database was hacked. The New York Times said it was “a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are on the rise.”
In 2022, Reuters – in an undignified headline, “Mexican president names salary of critical journalist in row over reporting” – reported that AMLO said the increase from 2021 to 2022 in journalist Carlos Loret de Mola’s salary was because he was paid to do “hatchet jobs” on AMLO personally and his government. Doxing Loret de Mola was a defense of his “political project of ending injustice and corruption … This is not a personal matter. My conscience is clear.”
This winter, on Friday, February 23, AMLO doxed Natalie Kitroeff, bureau chief of The New York Times for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The doxing came in tandem with the publication in the Times of an article headlined “U.S. Examined Allegations of Cartel Ties to Allies of Mexico’s President”; note that, although the U.S. spent years on the investigation, they declined to investigate AMLO himself, as (according to unauthorized anonymous sources) the “government had little appetite to pursue allegations against the leader of one of America’s top allies.”
When queried as to whether he was endangering Kitroeff and had broken Mexico’s law of Federal Protection of Personal Data, AMLO said the doxing was not a mistake. He would do it again “when it comes to a matter where the dignity of the president of Mexico is at stake. The political and moral authority of the president of Mexico is above that.” Although he has come very close, even former U.S. President Donald Trump has not said he is above the law.
AMLO went on to say that murders of journalists were overstated, and that critical media outlets and journalists were seeking “economic and political power.” According to the LatAm Journalism Review, he said to the assembled journalists: “You feel you are embroidered by hand, like a divine, privileged race, you can slander with impunity as you have done with us … and one cannot touch you even with the petal of a rose.” One might wonder whether AMLO’s hostility to the press is a matter of deep-seated personal psychology.
Article 19 analysis also focuses on AMLO’s use of disinformation in the mañaneras. The group asked for corroboration on 34 statements AMLO made at the mañaneras or in public speeches; 32 of the 34 statements were not corroborated.
Violence against Mexican Journalists in 2023
The Mexican press, according to, among others, The Guardian (a global English-language news outlet), believes that attacks against the country’s journalists stem directly from AMLO’s mañaneras, which are an “invitation to violence.” Reporting on an open letter from Mexican journalists after an assassination attempt on news anchor Ciro Gómez Leyva in December of 2022, The Guardian asserts that conditions for journalists, which weren’t great when AMLO took office, “have deteriorated dramatically” since then. Although AMLO apparently condemned the assassination attempt, “just 24 hours earlier [he] had been publicly denigrating the journalist, warning Mexicans that if they listened to such people too much they risked developing brain tumours.”
In its 2023 report on violence against the Mexican Press, Violencia contra la prensa en México en 2023: ¿cambio o continuidad? (Violence against the press in Mexico in 2023: Change or continuation?), Article 19 defined three kinds of attacks: direct intimidation and harassment; the illegitimate use of public power to stigmatize or use judicial processes to harass; physical and digital threats. AMLO’s behavior in his mañeras is the second type, the abuse of public power. (According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, part of the John S. and James L. Knight Press Freedom Center in New York City, AMLO has accused Article 19 of “being funded by the U.S. government” to work against AMLO, thus “violating our sovereignty” – he made these accusations on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2023).
Article 19 found that there were fewer attacks on journalists and media outlets in 2022, which saw 561 attacks on the press, including 5 murders and 1 disappearance of journalists, than in 2023, when there were 696 attacks on the press and 12 murders.
Of the 561 attacks in 2023, 224 (40%) comprised intimidation, harassment, and threats, while 106 (19%) were abuse of public power. The remaining 41% of attacks were divided into 13 categories, with blocking or changing journalistic content, physical attacks, hacking, destruction of property, and false arrest making up 33% of the total.
Over half the attacks on the press were committed by “officials” – public employees, police, national guard, and other armed forces. The remaining attacks were carried out by individuals (actores particulares, including AMLO in his mañaneras), the cartels (10%), political parties, and unidentified attackers.
Attacks on the press appear to be related to the topics reporters cover: 53% of attacks were on those who report on politics and corruption; 24% on reporters on security and justice; and just under 10% each on those who report on protests/social movements or human rights. About 54% of attacks were on men, 30% on women, and 16% on media outlets.
The reduction in overall attacks between 2022 to 2023 is about 20%, but Article 19 still asks whether this is a real change, or merely a matter of fewer reports of violence. The report covers the next-to-last year of AMLO’s term of office, but Article 19 cites a similar reduction in attacks on the press in the next-to-last year of Felipe Calderón’s term – only to see an increase in the last year.
We will have to wait and see.
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