Mexico: Social Media Reacts After Influential Journalist Carmen Aristegui is Fired · Global Voices
Ernesto Priego

Carmen Aristegui. Image by Flickr user chableproductions used under a CC BY 2.0 license
As reported by Global Voices on February 7, 2011,  Mexican Twitter users have been very active debating the news that influential anchorwoman Carmen Aristegui was dismissed from her MVS Noticias [es] radio show 72 hours after she asked on air if  President Felipe Calderón should “give a clear, pristine, formal answer” to whether he suffered from a drinking problem.
She asked the question after reporting that opposition lawmakers from the Partido del Trabajo (PT) led by Gerardo Fernández Noroña [es] interrupted a congressional session to raise a banner with Calderón's photo and a message that read:
Would you let a drunk drive your car? No, right? So why would you let one drive your country?
The segment of Aristegui's last radio show in which she covered the incident was broadcast on February 4, and has been widely distributed online.
Her direct question to the Mexican President has been documented in the following footage from her program, from minute 6:33 to 8:26 (9:03 to 9:12 am, Mexico City time). Below the video Global Voices offers a bilingual transcription of her exact words:
National left-of-center newspaper La Jornada, confirmed on Monday 5 February [es] that MVS issued the following statement: “Journalist Carmen Aristegui gave validity to an assumption, transgressing our code of ethics, and in [her] refusing to offer a public apology, as requested by the company, we have decided to terminate the contractual relationship we had with her.”
The audio in Spanish of the message broadcast by MVS can be heard in this clip uploaded by YouTube channel politicaypoliticosmx [es].
Kirén Miret (@kmiret), from Aristegui's production team, said on Twitter on February 7:
Sí, les confirmo que Carmen Aristegui sale del aire en MVS. Supongo que lo explicará cuando lo considere pertinente.
Meanwhile, @NoticiasMVS, the official Twitter profile of MVS, had nothing to say on the site that day about the incident.
Aristegui, who also has a TV show in CNN Mexico, only joined Twitter in July 2010 [es], and has not tweeted since October 9 [es].
Nevertheless, since last Monday thousands of tweets tagged with #Aristegui, and recently in connection to the hashtags #MVS and #libertaddexpresion (“freedom of speech”), have flooded the 140-character social network, making it a local and worldwide trending topic.
An anonymous Twitter account dedicated to supporting the journalist, @ApoyoAristegui, has a simple question in all caps as its profile information:
DONDE ESTA LA LIBERTAD DE EXPRESION?
But there is hardly any agreement about the situation. While many defend the journalist's right to ask the question, some bloggers do not. For example, Aguachile wrote:
Why is the president forced to prove a negative – to prove something that he isn't? To put it this way: Following this logic, does he also have to prove he is not the flying spaghetti monster?
Journalist Raymundo Rivapalacio (@rivapa) tweeted:
El caso de Carmen #Aristegui y #MVS es un gran pretexto para debatir públicamente la relación de los medios y el poder.
In response to Raymundo Rivapalacio (@rivapa), @afhierro replied, summing up a popular view:
@rivapa pero sobretodo, #Aristegui tiene razón: los mexicanos tenemos derecho a saber el estado de salud de quien nos gobierna.
Meanwhile, political blog Pateando Piedras reported on “Operación Tequila,” [Operation Tequila] a Distributed Denial of Service attack on the MVS website planned for 10 February. The campaign's motto read:
El alcoholismo no es el problema, la censura sí
Fernández Noroña (@fernandeznorona), the politician whose banner cost Aristegui her job, remains very active on Twitter, saying:
Jóvenes, cuídense, anda un borracho manejando y atropella a quien lo señala
A day before, Alfredo Guzman (@ideasdelmaza) had said:
Hoy todos muy preocupados por la libertad de prensa. Pero yo no vi a nadie quejarse por ser el país más peligroso para ejercer el periodismo
According to a study in progress, 62.89% of the tweets tagged with #Aristegui were RTs, and 39% of the tweets were made via the Web and the rest with mobile devices.
Announced by @ApoyoAristegui, Aristegui would give a press conference today, February 9th, at 11am Mexico City time.
At the time of writing this post, Twitter users were busy following the conference live. Gerardo Albarrán (@saladeprensa) reported Aristegui saying:
No rectifico ni me disculpo porque no tengo nada de que disculparme.” #Aristegui