New president Claudia Sheinbaum continues suppression of dissident voices
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This is the second post in which I’ve drawn on presentations from the International Symposium of Online Journalism, which took place March 27-28 at the University of Texas, Austin. Fifty-eight countries were represented among the 422 people who attended in person and 455 who participated online.
Recently I wrote about a special session conducted in Spanish for Latin American journalists — the Iberoamerican Colloquium of Digital Journalism (Coloquio Iberoamericano de Periodismo Digital). This is the second post on the Colloquium. The first was Latin American media under fire.
I did not attend in person but watched the sessions here on YouTube.
All the translation from Spanish is my own. — James Breiner
In this post you will hear about:
- how press freedom has been curtailed in the past six years in Mexico
- how a reporter was subjected to waves of abuse for merely asking the president a question
- how the military is exerting more power in more parts of the economy
- how the press is fighting back — solidarity, alliances with other industries
- 11 signs that the White House is following the autocrats’ handbook for killing media (a repeat from last week’s post)
Aquí un resumen en español del Coloquio entero por César López Linares
A warning from Mexico
At the end of the all-Spanish Colloquium, Rosental Alves, host of the event and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, took a question from Mauricio Lira, a journalist from Puerto Vallarta, a tourism destination in Mexico.
Lira said that in earlier sessions of the Symposium, he heard about threats to liberal democracies in Hungary, Syria, and India. Autocrats there were trying to silence opposition voices in the press. “We’re going through this right now in Mexico,” Lira said, “and no one seems to notice.”
Several presenters the day before had held up Mexico as a hopeful example of press freedom at work, but Lira said, “In the past five or six years, things have changed a lot in Mexico.” He was referring to the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party.
Alves responded by turning toward a reporter from Animal Político, a Mexican website known for fearless investigative reporting, and asking her to respond.
Above, Investigative reporter Nayeli Roldán. She was co-author of “The Master Fraud,” which revealed massive government corruption in awarding of contracts. Photo from Animal Politico website.
New president continues suppression
Nayeli Roldán took the microphone and apologized for not having anything prepared, but she clearly agreed with Lira that freedom of expression in Mexican media had eroded greatly in the past several years.
She said things will get even worse, not better, under Claudia Sheinbaum, hand-picked successor to Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Their Morena party took power in 2018 and has gradually and systematically suppressed dissident media voices. Sheinbaum has shown she will continue those policies. The rise of autocracy “is our future” if nothing changes, Roldán said.
As an example, she described the response when she posed a question to López Obrador at one of his morning press conferences. She asked if the press reports were true that the Mexican government was still using Pegasus spyware to track journalists and political opponents? López Obrador had promised to stop.
‘Avalanche of abuse’
For simply asking the question she received a torrent of insults and abuse in social media. “I was a trending topic for three days,“ Roldán said. What’s different today from a few years ago is that media like Animal Politico can’t make their voice heard with the public, she said.
If a skeptical or contrary voice pops up, the government and its pals unleash waves of advertising to discredit them. Public media have been co-opted into silence. The ruling Morena party employs trolls and influencers to defame media and journalists that don’t toe the party line.
Even when the PRI party exercised the “perfect dictatorship” years before, social media could get the party to change course, Roldán said. But not under the Morena party.
Other warning signs
Many political commentators in the U.S. and Europe have expressed optimism for Mexico now that it has a female president. Sheinbaum was elected in a landslide in June and took office last fall.
Actually, Roldán said, things are likely to get worse. Sheinbaum does not have the charisma of her predecessor that allowed him to keep tight control of the congress, the judiciary, and the army.
She believes the army is particularly worrisome since it has begun extending its tentacles aggressively into more areas of commerce, both domestic and international. They already control airports, highways, seaports, and border crossings.
How to fight back
“We need more alliances with our readers,” she concluded, “so they can hear us.”
She was echoing the words of Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes, who recommended regional alliances of media to produce and distribute news — such as what Connectas.org is doing for Latin America. And journalists need to enlist the help of people from other industries that are affected by the corrupting influence of autocrats. Finally, she emphasized the need to diversify revenue beyond advertising and grants.
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Echoes in the North: Sliding into less press freedom?
In a political dystopia like George Orwell’s novel “1984,” Big Brother, the Thought Police, and the Ministry of Truth flood the people with propaganda and punish independent thought. Autocrats hope that by sowing fear among media and journalists, they’ll begin self-censorship.
President Trump is following the autocrats’ media playbook: threats, slander, bullying, lawsuits, investigations, defunding, and outright criminalization of journalism.
For any of you who might have missed it:
Some White House actions, right from the autocrats’ media playbook
- He barred Associated Press (AP) Journalists from the Oval Office and Air Force One: In February 2025, AP reporters were denied access to key presidential events after the agency continued to use the term “Gulf of Mexico” instead of the administration’s preferred “Gulf of America.” CBS News
- Lawsuits against major media outlets: The administration filed lawsuits against ABC, CBS, and other media entities, alleging defamation and biased coverage. There is also only one wire service in the press pool instead of the typical three, while spots were handed to Newsmax and The Blaze, two right-wing outlets .The Guardian
- Intimidation of specific journalists: The White House publicly denounced and targeted respected journalists and media organizations. Among them, HuffPost reporter S.V. Date HuffPost . It also attacked journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine for breaking a scoop about national security lapses by the administration on a Signal messaging app. ABC News. And then there were the attacks on several New York Times journalists. Washington Times
- Eliminating funding of Public Broadcasters: Trump urged Republicans in Congress to eliminate funding to public broadcasters NPR and PBS. He said, “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party.” The Hill And on April 29, Trump tried to fire three board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. The corporation sued Trump, saying that he has no power to people from a private corporation. NPR
- Placing 1,300 Voice of America journalists on leave: Trump accused VOA of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”. The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”. BBC
- Trump ordered cancellation of all government subscriptions to major news media. A Trump official wrote, “Pull all contracts for Politico, BBC, E&E (Politico sub) and Bloomberg.” The action was triggered by ”erroneous theories on X about the Biden administration ‘funding’ anti-Trump media.” Axios
- Restrictions on government data access: “At the end of January, officials began removing thousands of pages from the websites of government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the Census Bureau, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency.” Reporters without Borders
- Trump administration cuts funding to scientific research. More than 1,900 top U.S. scientists are warning that the Trump administration’s moves against researchers imperil the nation’s health, economy and national security.
- Targeting of foreign journalists: Foreign journalists working for U.S.-funded media “fear being sent to repressive homelands after Trump’s cuts.” AP News+1Axios+1 At least 84 journalists of U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, who are in the United States on work visas could face deportation, including at least 23 “at serious risk of being immediately arrested upon arrival and potentially imprisoned,” according to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
- The Trump White House is now failing to distribute reporters’ pool stories it finds unflattering. That means other media do not receive the pool report.Oliver Darcy of Status reported that the White House was apparently upset with the pool reporter’s mention that “A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press were turned away from joining the pool.” Nieman Lab
- Trump ordered the investigation of two aides who defied him and refuted his claims of election fraud. “Trump’s persecution of critics intensified on Wednesday when he ordered the justice department to investigate a whistleblower and a cybersecurity director who refuted unfounded claims of election fraud.” The Guardian
- Trump is following the media-suppression playbook of Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, reports Adam G. Klein in Nieman Lab. When Orban returned to power in 2010, he pushed through a media law. Media that published articles that were deemed “unbalanced” or “immoral” could be fined. And he encouraged friendly oligarchs to take over local print, broadcast, and digital news outlets. Independent media became pro-Orban.
We continue our slide toward having just one version of reality in our news ecosystem. Let’s make sure we continue to resist intimidation and censorship.