The American media ProPublica responded to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s attack against his reporter, ensuring that Tim Golden He will not share who his sources are, nor will he attend in the morning to be questioned about his journalistic work.
ProPublica He added that through presidential spokesperson Jesús Ramírez, they sought out López Obrador to have his position regarding the journalist’s findings, they even gave them a summary of the report, but they only responded that the response was being analyzed.
Regarding the sources used, they revealed that The DEA asked not to name its sources. He also pointed out that there was some fear on the part of US officials regarding the publication of the report and reiterated that the case was closed by the Department of Justice and given the problems it could generate for the United States.
“DEA agents wanted to proceed with a more elaborate undercover operation inside Mexico, but Justice officials rejected that plan in late 2011, in part out of fear that even a successful prosecution conducted in the United States would be viewed by Mexicans as intolerable American interference in their politics. And the case was closed,” they said.
They also clarified that it was not a campaign coordinated by the United States to leak information and affect the Mexican government, due to the issue of donations from drug traffickers to AMLO’s campaign in 2006since it was published in three foreign media simultaneously: Deutsche Welle (DW), InSight Crime and ProPublica.
“Early on in our investigation, we became aware that a respected US journalism organization, InSight Crime, was pursuing the same allegations. In this case we reached an agreement with InSight Crime that we would work independently, but we would coordinate the publication date. “We delayed publication and rewrote our reporting to respond to a DEA request that we not name any confidential sources.”
But the publication of Anabel Hernández in the German media Deutsche WelleIn addition, she did give one of the names of the DEA sources, so later both ProPublica as InSight Crime They added the name of Mauricio Soto to their respective reports.
“As sometimes happens, however, a Mexican reporter writing for the German media DW published her own version of the donations and identified Mauricio Soto as a DEA source. With this information already published, InSight Crime and ProPublica proceeded to include it in our reports,” she noted.
The publication of ProPublica in response to López Obrador, signed by editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg, concluded with a reflection on the violence against the press and the president’s constant attacks on the media, adding a proposal for an interview for the Mexican president.
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“We hope that President López Obrador will grant us an interview, but in any case we will continue writing about Mexican corruption and the United States policy around it,” he concluded.