Hamstrung by Officials : Pressure, Payoffs Curb Mexico Press

Pete Hamill, a well-known New York journalist, came to Mexico City not long ago and took over as editor of the English-language Mexico City News.

He made all sorts of changes in the paper, a small-circulation tabloid. He eliminated headlines from opinion columns, introduced a cartoon called “Zippy the Pinhead,” ran features on human rights activists and gave wide coverage to the student side of a recent university strike.

All this was unusual in the somewhat predictable world of Mexico City journalism. But now the headlines are back, Hamill and Zippy are gone, and so, apparently, is the unconventional coverage of Mexico and its problems.

18 Quit in Protest

In early February, Hamill resigned from the News after its owner complained about coverage of the student strike. About 18 foreign members, or roughly half, of the News’ young staff left, protesting what they said was censorship. Spokesmen for Novedades, the News’ Spanish-language parent newspaper, said it was just a case of a recalcitrant editor and hot-headed gringos who got out of hand.

Mexico City journalists placed the incident squarely within the range of limits on newspaper work in Mexico.

Janette Becerra, a reporter for the newspaper Uno Mas Uno, said: “We learn how far you can go. There are sacred cows you have to avoid. Going too deeply into some subjects can even be dangerous. It seems the News went too far.”

The press in Mexico might best be described as hamstrung, tied to the government and its main policies by a complex web of glad-handing and arm-twisting. The press in Mexico City, with a dozen newspapers and numerous magazines, is watched most closely.

Journalistic Impotency

A willingness to cooperate is reinforced by corruption and the use, by government officials, of the power of suggestion. According to many reporters here, practices built up over a period of decades have led to journalistic impotency in the face of Mexico’s many problems.

“We practice the journalism of castration; we don’t really serve the wide interests of Mexican readers,” said Juan Antonio Valtierra, a television reporter and member of the Union of Democratic Journalists, a group of dissidents who crusade against abuses in their line of work.

Payoffs by the government to reporters are frequent. The best known and most visible form is through direct payment of money to reporters by the government ministries and agencies that they cover.

Reporters describe sordid instances of bribery. On trips out of the capital, functionaries stuff money directly into the pockets of accompanying reporters. A front-page story favorable to a ministry can mean cash for the reporter. An economic reporter who said she declined bribes told of a colleague who picked them up on her behalf and kept the money for himself.

Arturo Durazo, the former Mexico City police chief who is on trial in Mexico City on extortion charges, is said to have asked reporters into which pocket they would like the money deposited, the right or the left.

The right meant payment in dollars; the left, in Mexican pesos.

During last year’s hotly contested state elections in Chihuahua, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which was fighting hard to keep control of the state, paid the expenses, including hotels and steak dinners, of journalists from Mexico City.

Not all government ministries offer bribes, reporters say. The Foreign Relations Ministry is notoriously tight-fisted. On the other hand, agencies like Pemex, the government oil company, and the nationalized banks are said to be prime sources of bribes.

Many reporters try to avoid working a non-paying beat. And some benefit from their beats by selling advertising for commissions of 10% or 15%. In these days of economic hardship, the placement of ads by the government is a lifesaver for reporters as well as their publishers. One reporter, with 19 years’ experience, said she is paid the equivalent of only $60 a week and must sell advertising to survive.

If the bribes and commissions are not enough to ensure gentle--if not favorable--coverage, the government has less friendly means at hand.

If a newspaper is in financial trouble it might prefer to ease its coverage of electoral fraud rather than face an inquiry from the Social Security Agency on its failure to contribute social security taxes to the government.

If it wants to increase the number of pages it prints, it must deal with the government, for in Mexico the government controls the supply of newsprint. The Ministry of the Interior, which is the government’s main press watchdog, denies, though, that paper supplies have ever been used as a lever to keep the press in line.

Still, Interior Ministry officials routinely call newspaper editors and owners to cajole them into restricting or expanding coverage of one subject or another. The officials even influence the placement of stories.

Froylan Lopez, a board member of the weekly magazine Proceso, said: “The government is like a defender in a soccer game. He stays on the man with the ball all the time, making sure he never scores a goal. It is not necessarily a dramatic thing, but it is constant.”

Proceso is the main maverick of Mexican journalism. Its history reflects the mine field that is critical journalism in this country. Proceso was started by journalists who left the newspaper Excelsior 11 years ago, after the government of President Luis Echeverria engineered unrest within the newspaper and toppled a group of critical editors.

In 1982, the government of President Jose Lopez Portillo withdrew official advertising from Proceso, saying it would not finance the battering that the magazine was giving it.

Still, Proceso continues to publish relatively critical articles, probing corruption and calling to task government officials for inaction on a variety of issues. Lopez said Proceso maintains its independence by living mainly off income from subscriptions and street sales. It weaves carefully between criticism and outright rejection of the government.

In several issues last year, Proceso virtually reprinted articles from the foreign press that were critical of the government. Often, Proceso editors introduced such articles with a preamble lamenting constant attacks on Mexico engineered from abroad. In part, the preambles reflected a Mexican preoccupation with suspected publicity campaigns against Mexico. But they were also a means of getting critical news into print under the guise of saying, “The foreigners are at it again.”

Lopez thinks that besides the specific incidents of bribery, government control and co-optation, the Mexican press is aware of broad limits of acceptable coverage. Lopez and other journalists said that the present government of President Miguel de la Madrid is especially preoccupied with news that has potentially explosive social consequences, and that newspapers are attuned to that worry.

During last year’s elections in Chihuahua, only Proceso and the Mexico City News, using reports from abroad, described the open stuffing of ballot boxes that took place. Other newspapers reported only that opposition parties complained of fraud. After the first day’s reporting, the News made no further references to ballot-box stuffing.

During the recent student strike at the huge Autonomous University of Mexico, over fees and admission standards, the News clearly overstepped the general limits on coverage. It mentioned the tension and potential for violence in the conflict on campus while most other publications emphasized the correctness of the administration’s position and the laziness of the students.

Editor Hamill said the thrust of the coverage was incidental. Reporters for the News were assigned to cover the students and administration alike, he said. However, the administration preferred to communicate mainly through bulletins and communiques while the students offered interviews. The students were the more colorful subject.

“The administration expected us to print translations of handouts; we didn’t,” Hamill said from New York in a telephone interview.

Hamill, a novelist and for many years a New York columnist and reporter, took the job at the News last November after writing a glowing report on the paper for the Washington Journalism Review. He described how the News had changed through the years from a minor expatriate newsletter to a publication that aspired to cover Mexico seriously.

He said he quit after Romulo O’Farrill, the publisher of Novedades and the News, told him to end coverage of the student side of the strike.

Francisco Salinas, who has taken over running the News since Hamill left, denied that the News practices censorship, either self-censorship or any of the other vices commonly associated with Mexican journalism. He said O’Farrill merely ordered Hamill to balance the reporting.