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Controversy over firing leads Mexican radio station to rehire journalist

Award-winning Mexican radio host Carmen Aristegui will be back on the air by Feb. 21, MVS Radio announced, two weeks after having fired the journalist for commenting on allegations that President Felipe Calderón was an alcoholic, the BBC reports.

MVS Radio, which had already removed all references to Aristegui from its website, put the information back online, after posting a press release saying it had reached an agreement with the journalist to go through arbitration over her comments.

The station said it took into account the two years she had worked for the statement and comments from its listeners, who organized protests against MVS to demand the Aristegui’s reinstatement. The journalist herself blamed government pressure for the station’s original decision to fire her.

The director of MVS Radio, Alejandro Vargas, confirmed the announcement via Twitter, where he thanked the station’s audience and said they were “very important to the decision,” Radio Fórmula adds.

See full Knight Center coverage of the controversy here.

Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.

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