Mexico’s president spars with reporters over safety and drug cartels, claims journalist is DEA informant

A reporter told Mexico’s president Tuesday that his supporters had harassed her when she was trying to cover an event in June, and complained that his polarization of Mexican society has put journalists at risk.

When she asked him what he would do about it, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reacted with a mix of scorn and disinterest, simply saying “nothing, nothing, nothing.”

At his daily press briefing Tuesday, the president also claimed that another reporter he doesn’t like is a DEA agent or informant. In a country where drug cartels are dominant, that is a potentially deadly accusation; at least 142 reporters and media workers have been killed in Mexico since 2000.

Just days ago, a journalist who covered one of the country’s most dangerous crime beats was killed by gunmen, and two of his government-assigned bodyguards were wounded.

Journalists have long complained they frequently suffer verbal attacks from López Obrador, who has falsely accused some of them of being paid mouthpieces for conservatives.

While López Obrador has held far more news briefings, and answered far more questions than any president before him, reporters also complain about suffering abuse, online and in person, from the die-hard supporters of the president if they ask him any tough questions.

It came to a head Tuesday when independent reporter Reyna Ramírez described an incident in June when an angry crowd of the president’s supporters approached her, angrily shouting “sold out reporter,” and forcing her to flee the event she was covering.

“I am at risk because of this, now anyone can attack me in the street,” Ramírez said. “You have polarized society. “Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

“Have you gone on long enough?” López Obrador responded. Pressed to answer what he would do to control his supporters, he said “nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Just minutes later, López Obrador attacked journalist and author Anabel Hernández, whose latest book describes the alleged links between the current administration and Mexican drug cartels. The president claimed Hernández “is an agent or informant of the DEA.”

The Mexican president has refused to confront the drug cartels, saying drug traffickers are people who have chosen the wrong path in life but claims they ” respect the citizenry.” López Obrador denies he has made any deal with the cartels and claims, without offering evidence, that the accusations are part of a DEA plot to smear him.

It’s not the first time the president has attacked Hernández.

“It’s frustrating that the president sees the narcos as part of the people, but sees the journalists who investigate them as the enemy,” Hernández said.

In May, she complained that López Obrador’s hostility and accusations had made it hard for her to work.

“With the president’s aggressivity and hate speech, there is no way to do a book presentation,” Hernández said at the time. “It would wind up being too dangerous for me, and for the people attending.”

While López Obrador claims he is more open to the press than any previous Mexican president, his daily morning news briefings tend to favor soft-ball questions from sympathetic news outlets.

In the past, López Obrador has used confidential tax and banking records to publish the salaries of journalists he dislikes, and revealed the personal phone number of a foreign correspondent.

International press freedom groups have criticized the president’s attacks on the press, as have the U.S. State Department and the Organization of American States, noting they place already exposed journalists at greater risk.

Media workers are regularly targeted in Mexico, often in direct reprisal for their work covering topics like corruption and the country’s notoriously violent drug traffickers. 2022 was one of the deadliest years ever for journalists in Mexico, with at least 15 killed.

All but a handful of the killings and abductions remain unsolved.

“Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its report on Mexico in March.

Claudia Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico’s first woman leader in the nation’s more than 200 years of independence, will take office this fall.