The British newspaper the Guardian released a statement admitting that Mexican television broadcaster Televisa' elections coverage complied with the Federal Election Institute's impartiality rules.
On June 7, 2012, the Guardian claimed it had documents proving the broadcaster planned to provide favorable coverage to some politicians and slander their rivals. The documents in question had already been published by the magazine Proceso in 2005, despite the fact that they came from an anonymous source with no way to prove their veracity, according to the magazine Etcétera.
Afterwards, the political analyst Sergio Aguayo said that the documents were relevant to the 2012 Mexican presidential campaign, saying, "a newspaper like this, which is one of the most important in the world, would not risk its prestige if it did not have a reliable source."
However, in August 2012, the electoral authority in Mexico rejected accusations from a political party that Televisa's coverage was biased.
"After several months of correspondence, each side has come to better understand the other's position. Following a candid exchange of information and points of view, Televisa and the Guardian have resolved their differences and publicly issued an agreed joint statement," wrote Televisa lawyer Javier Tejado in an article published by the Guardian on its website Tuesday, Feb. 5.
"Televisa's paramount concern – not least given its status as the leading broadcaster in the Spanish-speaking world – has always been to defend the reputation of its journalists and the editorial integrity of its programming," Tejado added in the article.
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.
