MEXICO CITY (CN) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday sent a bill to the lower house of Congress that aims to extinguish the country’s state-owned news agency Notimex.
The agency has “fulfilled its purpose,” the bill text reads, stating that the Notimex model has become obsolete in the current media climate.
“The diversification of sources and outlets that provide information in real time and with possibilities of almost universal access, has shown that we can do without a state information agency,” the text reads.
Unionized Notimex workers went on strike in February 2020 in opposition to López Obrador’s appointed director general, Sanjuana Martínez, who they said created a hostile work environment and demanded they employ unethical practices. The agency stopped producing news in June of that year.
In April, López Obrador announced the closure of Notimex, telling reporters that his daily morning press conferences rendered the agency unnecessary.
Tuesday's bill echoed that sentiment and appeared to take it one step further, suggesting that non-state news outlets are likewise antiquated and superfluous.
“Today more than ever, the work of informing can be exercised without the necessity of intermediaries like agencies, even without professional media outlets that at other times acted as exclusive channels of information,” the text reads.
Such language appears to send the message that López Obrador’s official channels of information are the only necessary news sources for Mexican society, according to Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst and journalism professor at the Mexico City-based think tank CIDE.
“He seems to believe he is the only voice we need,” Bravo said.
The bill also notes that social media has given everyone, “not just people who work in journalism,” the ability to generate and disseminate information, and thus an agency like Notimex “no longer makes sense.”
The Notimex workers’ union declined to comment on the bill’s filing, citing pending negotiations over severance pay.
It did, however, say on social media: “As long as the decree is not approved, the strike is still in force and with it the defense of our human and labor rights.”
The bill would task the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Labor with negotiating compensation packages with workers and collectives. The liquidation of Notimex’s assets would be conducted by the Institute for the Return of Stolen Goods to the People, an agency created by López Obrador in 2020 that auctions confiscated property and channels the earnings into social programs.
It would also repeal a 2006 law that made Notimex’s status as a state-owned news agency official.
The agency, however, dates back to 1968, a history that the bill appears to put into question.
“There are versions that attribute the creation of the public limited company to the need to disseminate the news generated by the 1968 Olympics, and the company evolved to become a general coverage news agency,” the bill reads.
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