The Guardian has received documents from a source at Televisa, Mexico's largest TV network, that appear to show the network was paid to promote the Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto with favourable coverage in a multi-million dollar deal dating back to 2005. The documents also include a paid for campaign to denigrate the leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador to ensure he did not win the previous presidential election in 2006. In the event, AMLO was beaten by a whisker in what was widely seen by supporters as a election stolen by the governing PAN party. The paper reports:
Mexico's leftwing presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called on Enrique Peña Nieto, the current favourite to win the election on 1 July, to come clean about the alleged purchase of favourable coverage on Mexico's biggest television network.
His comments came a day after the Guardian published documents implicating the Televisa network in the sale of news and entertainment content to promote Peña Nieto's national profile when he was the governor of Mexico state and preparing his presidential bid.
"They should hand over all the information, the contracts, that they haven't wanted to show," López Obrador told reporters. "Of course they have them, and we need to see how much they paid, for what kind of message, and if they include all the promotion of Peña Nieto on the television."
López Obrador, who represents a coalition of leftist parties called the Progressive Movement – and who in the past has also been criticised for failing to release details of his own publicity budget – said he wanted to study the documents before saying anything more.
A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said: "The Guardian is committed to reporting on issues in Mexico, and we stand by the article in question. The report is based on documents given to our reporter, in addition to information provided by a former Televisa employee.
"In the story, we acknowledge that it is not possible to confirm the authenticity of the documents – which were passed to the Guardian by a source who worked with Televisa. However, the Guardian carried out extensive cross checks to confirm that the names, dates and situations mentioned in the documents largely lined up with events."
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