The “Mexico Initiative” PR Campaign Returns To Distort and Sanitize News Reports.
By Erin Rosa
Narco News
Editorial cartoon from Mexican artist El Fisgón in La Jornada. From left to right: “So we’re not going to be able to portray criminals as if they were heroes?” “Does that include ex-presidents, governors, police chiefs, and businessmen?”
Last week, Mexican media companies cooked up an agreement to regulate the way journalists report on the drug war, proposing methods to restrict both images and speech in news broadcasts. Behind the accord is the Mexico Initiative, a massive public relations campaign that has been accused of using the media to try and stamp out public dissatisfaction and rebellion.
Televisa, the nation’s largest media corporation, created the Mexico Initiative in 2010 during the lead-up to the country’s bicentennial celebrations.
Partnering with its main rival TV Azteca and dozens of radio stations, newspapers, and businesses, the initiative became a consortium of Mexico’s most powerful and wealthy information handlers.
They combined their resources to launch a PR blitz of TV ads, radio spots, and billboard endorsements, encouraging Mexicans to “bury their complexes” and “evolve.” After disappearing when the bicentennial festivities ended, the Mexico Initiative has returned with the agreement, which some federal lawmakers are now proposing become law.
On Thursday, the initiative’s backers held a press conference at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City to roll out the Mexico Initiative 2011 and ten-point accord (PDF) on media coverage of the drug war. It was broadcast on more than 450 stations throughout the country. “The Mexico Initiative can’t ignore the violence that accompanies us Mexicans on a daily basis in all areas of our lives,” said Sergio Sarmiento, a newspaper columnist and a presenter at the conference, when introducing the agreement.
“Mexico is living in an unprecedented situation due to the levels and the ways that organized crime has used violence. This situation has strained the state’s ability to fight the groups that have made terror their modus operandi.”
The Mexico Initiative accord calls for creating mechanisms to regulate images and photographs that show “acts of violence,” including where, how, and how many times they are published. Journalists must “avoid language and terminology used by the criminals,” and never portray criminals or alleged criminals as “victims” or “heroes.” In order to protect journalists in dangerous areas, the initiative recommends that reporters not report live from “the most violent areas.”
Reports that could jeopardize police or military operations against organized crime will not be published. The agreement doesn’t disclose exactly who will be deciding what is violent, what constitutes criminal terminology, and what type of content would be considered a national security threat.
President Felipe Calderón, the conservative head-of-state who declared war on drug trafficking groups when he began his term in 2006, issued his support for the declaration in a press release. Federal legislators with Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN in Spanish initials) applauded the move, while their rivals with the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Senate said they would work to make the agreement into a law so that all media outlets would be forced adhere to it.
In the United States there was no mention of the Mexico Initiative’s involvement with the agreement. The Mexico representative for the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists praised the accord as a “national breakthrough that could set professional standards well into the future.”
There were media outlets who refused to sign the agreement due to concerns over censorship, including La Jornada, a major left-leaning daily based in Mexico City; Proceso, a magazine that has criticized Calderón’s drug war; and Reforma, a large Mexico City daily that generally publishes articles favorable to the PAN. Despite the dissenters, industry analysts estimate that the Mexico Initiative represents 90 percent of the media industry in the country.
The text of the agreement shows that Televisa and its partners are dead set on supporting the government’s policies, even as violence from the drug war continues to rise.
By Erin Rosa
Narco News
Editorial cartoon from Mexican artist El Fisgón in La Jornada. From left to right: “So we’re not going to be able to portray criminals as if they were heroes?” “Does that include ex-presidents, governors, police chiefs, and businessmen?”Last week, Mexican media companies cooked up an agreement to regulate the way journalists report on the drug war, proposing methods to restrict both images and speech in news broadcasts. Behind the accord is the Mexico Initiative, a massive public relations campaign that has been accused of using the media to try and stamp out public dissatisfaction and rebellion.
Televisa, the nation’s largest media corporation, created the Mexico Initiative in 2010 during the lead-up to the country’s bicentennial celebrations.
Partnering with its main rival TV Azteca and dozens of radio stations, newspapers, and businesses, the initiative became a consortium of Mexico’s most powerful and wealthy information handlers.
They combined their resources to launch a PR blitz of TV ads, radio spots, and billboard endorsements, encouraging Mexicans to “bury their complexes” and “evolve.” After disappearing when the bicentennial festivities ended, the Mexico Initiative has returned with the agreement, which some federal lawmakers are now proposing become law.
On Thursday, the initiative’s backers held a press conference at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City to roll out the Mexico Initiative 2011 and ten-point accord (PDF) on media coverage of the drug war. It was broadcast on more than 450 stations throughout the country. “The Mexico Initiative can’t ignore the violence that accompanies us Mexicans on a daily basis in all areas of our lives,” said Sergio Sarmiento, a newspaper columnist and a presenter at the conference, when introducing the agreement.
“Mexico is living in an unprecedented situation due to the levels and the ways that organized crime has used violence. This situation has strained the state’s ability to fight the groups that have made terror their modus operandi.”
The Mexico Initiative accord calls for creating mechanisms to regulate images and photographs that show “acts of violence,” including where, how, and how many times they are published. Journalists must “avoid language and terminology used by the criminals,” and never portray criminals or alleged criminals as “victims” or “heroes.” In order to protect journalists in dangerous areas, the initiative recommends that reporters not report live from “the most violent areas.”
Reports that could jeopardize police or military operations against organized crime will not be published. The agreement doesn’t disclose exactly who will be deciding what is violent, what constitutes criminal terminology, and what type of content would be considered a national security threat.
President Felipe Calderón, the conservative head-of-state who declared war on drug trafficking groups when he began his term in 2006, issued his support for the declaration in a press release. Federal legislators with Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN in Spanish initials) applauded the move, while their rivals with the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Senate said they would work to make the agreement into a law so that all media outlets would be forced adhere to it.
In the United States there was no mention of the Mexico Initiative’s involvement with the agreement. The Mexico representative for the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists praised the accord as a “national breakthrough that could set professional standards well into the future.”
There were media outlets who refused to sign the agreement due to concerns over censorship, including La Jornada, a major left-leaning daily based in Mexico City; Proceso, a magazine that has criticized Calderón’s drug war; and Reforma, a large Mexico City daily that generally publishes articles favorable to the PAN. Despite the dissenters, industry analysts estimate that the Mexico Initiative represents 90 percent of the media industry in the country.
The text of the agreement shows that Televisa and its partners are dead set on supporting the government’s policies, even as violence from the drug war continues to rise.
At least five street blockades were reported throughout San Nicolas this morning. The attacks occurred while elements of the Mexican Navy were conducting simultaneous operations in the area.
