Mexico’s freedom of data institute, a authorities company, stated Thursday that it could 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 call by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador throughout a televised information convention on Thursday that left many aghast in Mexico, one of many deadliest international locations on the planet for journalists. No less than 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006, based on the Committee to Defend Journalists.
Through 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. regulation enforcement officers had for years been trying into claims that allies of Mr. López Obrador met with and took hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from drug cartels.
Along with railing towards 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, stated on X, the social media platform.
Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Transparency, Entry to Info and Private Information Safety, or INAI, stated in a assertion that its investigation would search to ascertain whether or not Mr. López Obrador had violated Mexican laws defending private information. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of data 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 12 months, has lengthy maintained a confrontational relationship with the information media and commonly assaults journalists by identify at his morning information conferences.
The transfer towards the journalist for The Occasions follows weeks of assaults on a ProPublica reporter, which got here after the information group revealed a narrative final month detailing an earlier investigation into accusations that drug cartels had donated hundreds of thousands to Mr. López Obrador’s first presidential marketing campaign, in 2006, which he misplaced. The president known as the reporter, Tim Golden, a “pawn” and “a mercenary within the service” of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Individually, The Occasions’s report on Thursday revealed a more moderen inquiry throughout Mr. López Obrador’s presidency, which began in 2018, by which American regulation enforcement officers examined claims that confidants of Mr. López Obrador had acquired hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from drug cartels. The article cited U.S. information and three folks accustomed to the matter.
“This can be a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world chief at a time when threats towards journalists are on the rise,” The New York Occasions stated in a assertion on Thursday in response to Mr. López Obrador’s information convention.
The US by no means opened a proper investigation into Mr. López Obrador, and the officers concerned finally shelved the inquiry after concluding that the U.S. authorities had little urge for food to pursue allegations towards the chief of a key American ally.
Throughout their inquiry, U.S. officers recognized potential 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 felony teams.
