The Mexican Institute for Freedom of Information, a government agency, said Thursday it will launch an investigation into the president’s disclosure on national television of the personal cellphone number of a New York Times reporter.
The investigation centers on a decision by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a televised news conference Thursday that horrified many in Mexico, one of the world’s deadliest countries for journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006.
During the press conference, López Obrador read aloud an email from Natalie Kitroeff, New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested comment for an article revealing that U.S. law enforcement had for years investigated allegations that López Obrador’s allies met with drug cartels and stole millions of dollars.
In addition to railing against Ms. Kitroeff and identifying her by name, Mr. López Obrador publicly recited her phone number.
“This amounts to doxxing, which is illegal under Mexican privacy laws and puts journalists at risk,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico’s representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said on X, the social media platform.
Mexico’s National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, or INAI, said in a declaration that its investigation will seek to establish whether Mr. López Obrador violated Mexican legislation on the protection of personal data. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of information system, created more than two decades ago to make operations more transparent and curb abuses of power.
Mr. López Obrador, whose six-year term expires this year, has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media and regularly attacks journalists by name in his morning news conferences.
The action against a Times reporter follows weeks of attacks we are a reporter for ProPublica. Last month he published an article detailing a separate investigation into allegations that drug cartels had donated millions to López Obrador’s failed presidential campaign in 2006. The president called the journalist, Tim Golden, a “pawn” and ” a mercenary in service.” of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Thursday’s Times article revealed a more recent investigation during López Obrador’s presidency, which began in 2018. American law enforcement has spent years examining allegations that López Obrador’s confidants had received millions of dollars from drug cartels while running the country, the article reveals.
But instead of telling the Times about the American investigation, the president decided to broadcast Kitroeff’s phone number on national television, a particularly threatening tactic in a country where so many journalists are harassed and killed.
“This is a troubling and unacceptable tactic by a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are on the rise,” the Times said in a declaration on Thursday.
The United States never opened a formal investigation into Mr. López Obrador, the Times reported, and the officials involved eventually dropped the probe after concluding that the U.S. government had little desire to pursue charges against the leader of an important American ally.
During their investigation, US officials identified possible links between the cartels and López Obrador’s allies and advisors after he took office, but found no direct links between the president himself and criminal groups.
