Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has announced that he is closing the Notimex news agency. He believes that his own daily news updates are enough to keep the population informed about what is happening in the country. It was on Friday that the president announced that he will close the national news agency. According to analysts, the decision is the latest in a series of attempts by López Obrador to publicly control state media and scientific or cultural institutions, reports The Washington Post. – We don’t need a state news agency anymore, it was from a time characterized by press releases. It is not something we need as a government, he said in connection with his daily news briefing, the newspaper writes. Marked by strikes The unionized workers at Notimex went on strike in 2020 when it was claimed that some of them were unfairly fired, or harassed, by the agency’s head Sanjuana Martínez, who was appointed by López Obrador in 2019. Since then, the two sides have not some progress in resolving the strike, and now the president is announcing that the agency will be closed following an agreement to pay the striking employees severance pay. Sanjuana Martínez says she stands behind the decision to close the 55-year-old news agency, which she says was riddled with corruption when she took over, The Washington Post reports. Worrying development The news agency Notimex was started in 1968 with the aim of reporting from the states in the country that were not covered by the big city newspapers. The freedom of expression organization Atención Médica Integral (Amedi) now sees a worrying development in the country where the president is making publicly funded media a mouthpiece for his own government. “These are publicly funded electronic media intended to provide information without bias in favor of the government,” the organization wrote in a statement, according to the Washington Post. See the president’s statement in the clip above.
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