Once again, as has been recurring throughout his agonizing six-year term, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador attacked the media and journalists this Monday, and asked citizens to learn to read newspapers, listen to the radio and watch television. , and that they no longer paid attention to commentators or famous journalists, because they are not independent and have a party, militants of what they have called “the conservative bloc”, which encompasses in its vision of the world – literally – everything that does not be it Morena or its satellites. Translation: the President is afraid that a large vote on June 2 will endanger some of his most precious jewels and that his utopia of going down in history as the great transformer of Mexico will be shattered at the polls.
The fear of an electoral defeat has led him to reinforce, with his attacks on the press from the National Palace, the strategy of reputational damage against the media and journalists, reflected by that cry of “don’t pay attention to them!” Hitting the messenger has been the method designed by the head of López Obrador’s propaganda, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, which was successful in the first part of the six-year term, but which has been wearing out. Today it contains the avalanche of popular rejection that there would be without that mechanism of inhibition and defamation, but it cannot hide reality.
The paid flesh and blood pens in the newspapers and their organic intellectuals in the radio and television programs are no longer working for them, who instead of defending ideas are dedicated to vilifying journalists who, contrary to what the President, they are mostly independent and do not respond to partisan interests. The morning paleros ceased to be functional for these purposes a long time ago, and the journalists and intellectuals at the service of Ramírez have not been able to extinguish independent voices for the simple reason that the truth overwhelms propaganda.
The President wants the ears and eyes to be closed and that the voters only focus on him and listen to his morning sermons. He has not succeeded because the grievances are so many that data are immune to attacks and disqualifications, and the damage inflicted by his public policies, or lack thereof, has negatively impacted hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who do not have to read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television news to become aware of this historical misfortune, measured in results, which is called “the fourth transformation.”
The acts of faith have been evaporating. The morning session, turned into a scaffold inside the National Palace, has lost effectiveness. SPIN Political Communication Workshop reported that the average daily visits on Facebook to this unconstitutional exercise, which it disguises as “circular dialogue”, fell to 34 thousand compared to the million 383 thousand it had in 2020. The reporters Carlos Loret and Joaquín López-Dóriga, two of his main enemies, have respectively 9 million 600 thousand and 8 million 300 thousand followers on platform president of the Republic in front of any journalist.
But we must insist, it is not the reporters but reality. The press is a messenger and connects rulers with the governed. But for it to have an impact it is essential that what it reports is true. The fame of some is not what gives them credibility, but rather their consistency over decades – indeed, decades – and their ability to convey the facts. López Obrador does not communicate facts, but plausibility, and alternative truths that he supports in disqualifications, insults, and infamies.
Yesterday it was the turn of the Independent Commission of Investigation on the Covid-19 Pandemic, which concluded that the management of the López Obrador government caused 808,619 excess deaths, of which 511,000 were directly caused by the disease. López Obrador accused the experts who were part of it of being “false” and “scoundrels” and considered the document an “act of vile politicking” with the purpose of “harming us.”
People will have their idea of who is lying, but they will not be able to forget that the coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, estimated the maximum number of deaths from the disease at 60,000, and said that the President’s moral strength was sufficient for him not to would infect López Obrador issued a detente against the covid, but even so he had the coronavirus twice. He ended up better keeping it.
The President also does not like it at all when violence is mentioned, and he often says that the media and journalists magnify it. Yesterday he assured that “there is no more violence,” but rather more homicides, as if they were not inseparable factors. López Obrador said that there are fewer robberies and kidnappings than in previous six-year terms, but they are crimes under common law and the responsibility of local authorities, not federal ones, so it is a half-truth and misleading.
There are certainly fewer robberies, but also more kidnappings. The Stop Kidnapping Association reported that last year they rose 3.2% compared to 2022. And regarding intentional homicides, the daily data from TResearch continues to be proof of its failure: 186,139 four months before the end of its six-year term – which itself will have 60 days less – which is more than there were in the 12 years of the government of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón and 30 thousand more than the government of Enrique Peña Nieto.
Health and safety are the areas where his government is least rated, followed by corruption. The three of them cross the electoral campaigns in whose ballots he will not appear, but rather whoever he wants to take his baton. Their numbers outline possible defeats. His candidates will no longer give any more of themselves, and he only has to finish off the journalists. With his power, lack of scruples and desperation, you can expect anything in the three and a half weeks until the elections, but reality will not disappear.
