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 Travel Writers' Resources | April 2006 
Experts Agree Press has more Freedom
 Kelly Arthur Garrett - The Herald Mexico
Media experts agreed Thursday that the Mexican press has evolved along with Mexican democracy to the point that its role in the current electoral campaign bears little resemblance to its unabashed pro-government cheerleading of just two decades ago.
At the same time, journalists and academics gathered at a "Communications Media and the Elections" forum at the Colegio de Mexico in the south of the capital expressed concern at the growing power of the electronic media.
There was also a clear consensus the current focus on personal attacks and he-said-she-said accusations isn´t the kind of coverage reformers had in mind when press freedom began to open up in the 1990s.
But blame for an emphasis on superficiality and for other press shortcomings wasn´t limited to the media organizations.
"The campaigns themselves are orthodox and unimaginative," said Pascal Beltrán del Río, a former reporter for the magazine Proceso who is now part of the editorial team for the relaunched daily Excelsior. "It´s not our fault they (the candidates) tend to talk in sound bites."
Javier Solórzano, a communications professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University´s Xochimilco campus who´s also on staff at TV Azteca, agreed that the campaigns have been "mediocre," a dilemma further complicated by the logistical problems of getting news out of modern, travel-heavy and content-poor campaigns.
"It´s not easy to cover a campaign," he said. "Most of the time there aren´t any ideas coming out of them."
Political scientist Denise Dresser, a prolific columnist in Spanish and English for publications throughout North America, lamented what she called the electronic media´s failure to act as a fourth estate counterweight to the branches of government.
"Instead, television acts as a power unto itself, with its own age nda and its own interests," she said. "The relationship between the government and the electronic media reflects a deeper problem in Mexico, which is crony capitalism."
Dresser cited the recently enacted media law reforms, which are widely seen as designed to extend Televisa´s and TV Azteca´s electronic media duopoly well into the dawning digital age, as a clear case of an established elite acting for its own benefit at the expense of the public good.
"The new media law represents everything that´s wrong with the way capitalism is working in Mexico," she said.
Emerging from the panelists´ comments was the existence of a curious flip-flop in the relationship between the electronic media and the political class.
For decades, the media supported the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) - not necessarily because of any ideological affinity, but rather, in the words of Colegio de Mexico researcher and author Sergio Aguayo, "to protect their own interests."
Now, however, the relationship is reversed, with the PRI and the National Action Party, or PAN (but not the Party of the Democratic Revolution) having found it in their own interest to support the two media giants by passing the new media law.
"There is sufficient evidence, both private and public, that (PRI presidential candidate) Roberto Madrazo and (PAN candidate) Felipe Calderón decided to play along and get the law passed for electoral considerations, with the expectation that their campaigns would get benefits from the television networks," Aguayo said.
"How cheaply they sold out their love and ethics, and how expensive that will be for the country," he said.
Daily Reforma columnist Sergio Sarmiento wondered, however, just how much influence the media really has in swaying voters. He cited the 1988 election, in which he said PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari received 95 percent of the electronic media coverage, all favorable, and eventually beat challenger Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in a disputed election.
"Whether Cárdenas really won or not, he clearly did far better than a share of just 5 percent of the media coverage would have predicted," Sarmiento said. "Of course, the media play a big role, but they´re not going to decide by themselves what the results of this election are going to be."
Roberto Rock, editorial director of EL UNIVERSAL, stressed the ethical commitments that all media outlets, print or electronic, need to adhere to for responsible coverage.
The media have a special responsibility, he said, to foster participation in the electoral process, to provide useful information for voters, and to see to it that the rules are being followed so the elections are fair.
"The priority should be to improve democracy in Mexico," Rock said.
Kelly.Garrett@eluniversal.com.mx |
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