A "free press" in Mexico - but who's really paying the tab?

MGRR Opinion - All the news they want you to have, and at a price you can afford

Mérida protesters recently admonished a local newspaper, "Stop hiding the truth!"

Mérida, Yucatán -
In my university days I was an enthralled student of Russian for three years (most of it now forgotten, unfortunately). My Russian professor was a wonderful man named Pyotr (Peter) Pirogov, and he was a genuine Soviet Air Force defector who one day in the 1950s took off from a base in Czechoslovakia in a then state of the art two-seater MiG and made it to an Austrian air field, chased all the harrowing way by his own squadron, which had orders to shoot him down.

But flying very low and under the radar he made it to freedom, and later to Canada, and still later to the United States. He lived, and as a result I got to learn Russian from a fine teacher who greatly motivated me. That was in the fall of 1970. (His co-pilot, by the way, met a very different fate, but I'll leave that for another story . . . one dealing with trust.)

In those days, the old Soviet empire was of course very much alive and well. It would be another 20 years before Marxist ideology collapsed along the Eastern Front. In Moscow, there were two main Communist Party newspapers. The official party organ was Pravda, which means "truth." A second important daily was Izvestia, which means "news."

When he was at times exhausted from drilling his young students on how to read and pronounce the Cyrillic alphabet, professor Pirogov - who loathed everything about Soviet totalitarianism - would tell us jokes or little sayings in Russian. The one which delighted me the most was simple, and was allegedly common with Muscovites on dark, bitterly cold mornings when they arrived at the local newsstands to hungrily scan the headlines: "There is no truth in Pravda, and there is no news in Izvestia," they supposedly grumbled sotto voce.

Yes, it loses something - a lot, actually - when translated into English, but it sounded wonderful in Mr. Pirogov's gruff Russian. And it brings me to the point of my comments about free press issues, on which Mexico is rather focused in this 2012 electoral season.

Last week (May 23) MGRR covered and reported on the grassroots YoSoy 132 movement when it made its first appearance here in Mérida. No other local English language press bothered to do so, despite the fact that most of what the 132 crowd is barking about is media distortion. MGRR's story and the accompanying photos (two of which are in this post) have captured the attention of almost 1,200 readers as of today, from within and without Mexico. Stats suggest that readers on both sides of the border are interested in the subject, regardless of whether their language is Spanish or English. (YoSoy 132 protest arrives in Mérida).

This morning over breakfast I was reading one of Mérida's local dailies, from which I quote at times. It seems that Diario de Yucatán, founded on May 25, 1925, is celebrating its 87th birthday this week. Today's edition went on and on in an exuberant display of self-praise, congratulating the paper for its "objectivity, independence and veracity." But Diario is none of those things. Diario, as everyone knows (everyone who can read elementary Spanish, that is) is the peninsular mouthpiece of Mexico's National Action Party - PAN.

Mérida offers the discerning news consumer a selection of other "independent" papers, too, which in reality are answerable to their own political masters. They include La Verdad ("The Truth," just like the Russian Pravda from long ago), and a local rag called Por Esto! (politically it's blatantly left wing, although its crime coverage in Cancún and Quintana Roo state is very reliable). But there are no truly independent newspapers in this city, or for that matter in much of Mexico. That's what's caused the YoSoy 132 activists to hit the streets two weeks ago, as is obvious from their placards. The top one says "Diario, stop hiding the truth." The bottom one renames the paper Diario de YucaPAN.

The problem with freedom of the press in Mexico has nothing to do with the law. Article 7 of Mexico's constitution (you can read it on the right sidebar) guarantees it, just as the First Amendment does in the United States. But it's a heck of a lot easier to meet the monthly operating overhead with those nice checks that come in every month from the major political parties. A large percentage of Mexican newspapers and media outlets are bought and paid for, lock, stock and barrel. How cheaply freedom is sometimes sold here.

On the street, any morning, you can buy Diario de Yucatán or its competitors for eight pesos - nine on Sundays. But the price paid by Mexicans throughout their often difficult lives has been far higher, and some are finally beginning to talk about it.

A reader and MGRR trade candid thoughts on a free press and independent journalism
U.K.'s Guardian reveals Televisa-EPN deal
A Free Press under fire in Mexico