Mexico’s Freedom of Information Institute, a government agency, said Thursday it would launch an investigation into the president’s disclosure on national television of the personal cell phone number of a New York Times journalist.
The investigation focuses on a decision by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a televised news conference Thursday that left many horrified in Mexico, one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. At least 128 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
During the press conference, López Obrador read aloud an email from Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times’ bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested comments for an article that revealed that U.S. law enforcement officials had been investigating allegations for years that López Obrador’s allies met with drug cartels and took millions of dollars from them.
In addition to criticizing Kitroeff and identifying her by name, López Obrador publicly recited her phone number.
“This amounts to doxxing, is illegal under Mexican privacy laws and puts journalists at risk,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said on X, the social media platform.
The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data of Mexico (INAI) said in a statement that his investigation would seek to establish whether López Obrador had violated Mexican legislation that protects personal data. The institute administers Mexico’s freedom of information system, which was created more than two decades ago to make government operations more transparent and curb abuses of power.
López Obrador, whose six-year term comes to an end this year, has long maintained an adversarial relationship with the media and regularly attacks journalists by name at his morning news conferences.
The action against a Times journalist follows weeks of attacks on a ProPublica reporter, who published an article last month 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 reporter, Tim Golden, a “pawn” and “a mercenary in the service” of the DEA.
Thursday’s Times article revealed a more recent investigation during López Obrador’s presidency, which began in 2018. U.S. law enforcement officials spent years investigating claims that López Obrador’s confidants had received millions of dollars from drug cartels while he ran the government. country, the article revealed.
But rather than speak to The Times about the U.S. investigation, the president decided to reveal 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 statement Thursday.
The United States never opened a formal investigation into López Obrador, The Times reported, and the officials involved ultimately shelved the probe after concluding that the U.S. government had little desire to pursue allegations against the leader of a key U.S. ally. .
During their investigation, U.S. officials identified possible links between the cartels and López Obrador’s allies and advisers after he took office, but found no direct link between the president himself and the criminal groups.