Without revenue autonomy, the press will remain tied to the state

The crisis of violence against the press has an explanation that must be a starting point for the search for institutional solutions: having been a visible/invisible sector of the system/regime and part of the apparatus of construction of the ideology of the PRI State, the media never considered a process of transition to relative autonomy based on the economic support of society and not of the government. The press began to separate from government control in 1968 with the conquest of independent spaces of information and criticism, especially in the newspaper Excelsior of Julio Scherer García and the newspaper El Día of the ex-communist and progressive PRI Enrique Ramírez y Ramírez.However, the press conquered spaces of dissemination and opinion, but never cared about building sources of social financing other than the advertising income of public offices. In this context, the press will never be independent as long as it continues to live on the advertising revenues of governments and parties in power. The political transition driven by the systemic crisis of 1968 was met with the absence of a civil society with the capacity to finance critical communication and was limited to the existence of some few progressive positions within the regime that understood the democratic need for a press independent of the system/regime/state. but once in institutional positions he did not worry about building mechanisms for financing public opinion as spaces for the expression of democracy. Even the INE of Lorenzo Córdova Vianello and Ciro Murayama Rendón have built the mechanisms of control of the media for the benefit of their own popularity and not for the exercise of criticism as an instrument of democratic politicization of society. The only way to strengthen the media as spaces for democratization is located in the financing of their existence through direct contributions from society. In the face of president Trump’s harassment, The New York Times and The Washington Post appealed to subscriptions for their digital models and replaced the collapse of advertising from companies linked to the power structure. The failure of the institutional and legislative mechanisms for the protection of journalists is explained by the fact that public offices are not convinced to defend and protect those who criticize them, giving the status of doctrine to President López Portillo’s pronouncement that he would not give money from the budget to finance media that criticize him. Society not dependent on the state or the parties is very insistent on demanding the existence of media that criticize the malfunction of the system/regime, but has not been able to buy subscriptions to finance criticism. The media, in turn, have also not established channels of integration of interests with the demanding independent information society, and less have been open to the sale of percentages of shares without influence on editorial policy so that society is involved in the life of publications. The media appear as private businesses of business consortia that benefit families and their high standards of living, abandoning a sensible policy of wages and mechanisms to protect the lives of their employees. Of fifteen media outlets that are published in Mexico City and have circulation throughout the republic, only one is run by a journalist, although it modified its public shareholding structure to concentration in a few hands. And the state has been unable to promote the construction of journalists’ media outlets and not businessmen. The journalistic model of dependence on the government transitioned to a critical press without the strengthening of its financial structure to achieve the autonomy of public and private interests that have taken advantage of the lack of journalistic companies of journalists. Without a change in its revenue structure, the press will continue to rely on the subsidies concerned by the royal powers of the republic. Politics for dummies: Politics thrives on free information. Political Indicator adds to the atmosphere of presidential succession 2024. Subscribe to the WhatsApp network of the weekly digital magazine Palacio Nacional 2024: Ana Karina Sánchez López, anakarinasl@hotmail.com WhatsApp: 55-1058-6460 and consult www.indicadorpolitico.mxThe content of this column is the sole responsibility of the columnist and not the newspaper that publishes it.



Original source in Spanish