The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador justified himself this Friday, February 23, for having leaked the telephone number of a journalist from the newspaper The New York Times, who published a report on alleged links between those close to the president and drug traffickers.
López Obrador read the issue on Thursday the 22nd during his usual press conference while revealing a questionnaire that the American newspaper sent him for the article, which led to an investigation by the entity in charge of data protection, as well as criticism from the newspaper and from press freedom defense organizations.
“There can be no law above a sublime principle that is freedom,” argued the president this Friday the 23rd, when asked if the dissemination of the number did not perhaps imply a violation of the rules for the protection of personal data.
In his opinion, transparency must prevail.
“What happens when this journalist is slandering me? She is linking me and my family (with organized crime) without evidence,” López Obrador defended himself, facing a sector of the press that he accuses of serving private interests.
The New York Times considered on Thursday the 22nd that The leak represents a “worrying and unacceptable tactic (…) at a time when threats once morest journalists are increasing.”
Read more: Juan Orlando Hernández: Witnesses accuse former president of Honduras of receiving drug money
This Friday the 23rd, organizations defending freedom of expression criticized that the leftist president had not apologized.
López Obrador “explicitly said that the laws in the country do not apply to him, that his violation of them is intentional and that he does not care regarding the consequences for the exercise of fundamental rights,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter ) Jan-Albert Hootsen, representative in Mexico of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Mexican president @lopezobrador_ says it was not ‘an error’ to publicize the telephone number of @nytimes Mexico bureau chief @Nataliekitro. In other words: López Obrador says that he considers himself to be above the law in Mexico. This is deeply disappointing and concerning. https://t.co/yDZSuy9Zo7
— Jan-Albert Hootsen (@jahootsen) February 23, 2024
The president “should apologize to the journalist,” he told the television station Millennium Balbina Flores, spokesperson for the international organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), following having classified this episode on Thursday, February 22, as a “retaliation.”
Mexico has recorded some 149 murders of journalists since 2000, according to that organization.
According to The New York Times, an investigation by US officials “uncovered information that pointed to possible links between powerful cartel operators and officials and advisors close” to López Obrador before he was president and already in power.
Read also: “El Mencho”: the brand of tequila with which the head of the CJNG laundered money
However, he stressed that “the United States never opened a formal investigation into the Mexican ruler and the officials who were conducting the investigation ultimately shelved it.”
Two other similar reports have appeared in recent weeks in international media based on anonymous American sources, which López Obrador attributes to an attempt to derail the candidacy of the ruling party Claudia Sheinbaum, favorite for the presidential elections on June 2.
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