The award-winning host of Mexico’s most popular national news station has been fired in a case many suspect to be a move against freedom of expression.
Carmen Aristegui was sacked by MVS Radio after she criticized her employers for dismissing two reporters who had used the company’s logo in a way that suggested it sponsored MexicoLeaks, a transparency website based on WikiLeaks.
Aristegui and her team had been responsible for revealing that President Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife were using properties financed by a government contractor.
Aristegui gave a television interview outside the radio station, declaring the dismissals to be unfair and hinting that the government may be behind the action. The decision “seems to have been planned in advance and to be backed up by great resources and power.”
Some commentators accepted that Aristegui and her team had acted unwisely. “If the journalist did not consult on the alliance between MVS and the social platform Mexico Leaks, she made the first mistake,” said columnist Ricardo Rafael in the newspaper El Universal.
Yet outrage at the decision was widespread, as Aristegui was commonly viewed as a powerful, independent journalist who dared to challenge authority.
“Carmen Aristegui is an indispensable voice in our public life,” said one of Mexico’s leading historians, Enrique Krauze, on his Twitter account. “Her departure from MVS seriously injures freedom of expression in Mexico.”
Protestors gathered outside the radio station to demand Aristegui’s return. Calls of support for the journalist trended on social media and several leading commentators said they would no longer work with the broadcasting company.