López Obrador sponsors “Continental Independent Journalists Conference” – North America

he Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez ObradorDuring his six-year government, attacks on the media have increased, and this Friday he welcomed dozens of communicators with influential information channels on the YouTube network.

“We don’t want journalism to be suppressed,” the leftist leader said at a regular press conference, which kicked off a communicators’ conference under the motto “Information is liberation.”

López Obrador will leave office on October 1 His YouTube channel has 4.4 million subscriberswhich won rounds of applause from the participants.

“It’s an honor to be with Lopez Obrador,” shouted the correspondents invited to the meeting, some of whom were from Argentina and Peru.

“There is no precedent for a congress like today’s, made up of independent journalists and communicators,” said Manuel Pedrero, a 21-year-old Mexican political science student and director of Los Reporteros MX.

Pedreiro added that social networks offer “the world the possibility to tell its own version, its own truth” in the face of “hegemonic media”.

The young man stressed that technology, which is the best ally of these mainstream media outlets, has become their “downfall.”

However, López Obrador’s initiative has sparked skepticism and criticism on social networks, where journalists and communicators invited by the government have a strong presence.

Journalist Érika Velasco, head of information at Latinus, a portal critical of the government, stressed in her X account that “it was like this Friday’s La Mañanera: YouTubers applauded, AMLO cheered. What a sad scene.”

“The president didn’t start by talking about the drug blockade and the shooting in Culiacán,” the journalist added, referring to the violence that took place in the northwestern state of Sinaloa on Thursday.

López Obrador has frequently accused Mexico’s traditional media and influential journalists of being part of a “power mafia.”

Hit by a wave of violence from organised crime, Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries for journalism, with more than 150 journalists murdered since 1994, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).