Tim Steller's column: Attacks on journalists for political gain proliferate

Faced with the killings of six journalists so far this year, Mexico’s president has reacted in a surprising way.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not only kept on attacking the press but increased his attacks. He’s targeted individual journalists at news conferences, revealing their salaries and other personal information. He’s called reporters critical of his administration “thugs, mercenaries, sellouts.”

It’s gotten so bad that the European Union condemned López Obrador’s attacks last week.

The president’s rhetoric has been surprising and disappointing, but it’s not hard to figure out why he does it. Wherever nationalist-populist politicians have taken office — Mexico, Brazil, Hungary, the Philippines, Turkey, and, yes, the United States — they attack the news media as a strategy for consolidating power.

These days, it’s also a strategy employed by candidates cultivating the support of the populist right. Candidates for Arizona’s GOP nominations regularly attack the press in a transparently strategic way as they angle for the U.S. Senate, the governor’s office, secretary of state or other positions.

It’s so common to hear talk of the “liberal media” or “fake news” that these phrases sometimes sound like background noise. But as this rhetorical strategy spreads and grows, it creates a dangerous information environment of extreme relativism and demonization of journalists who present unwelcome truths.

The response to coverage of last year’s election review in Maricopa County showed that and continues reverberating in campaigns.

I asked leaders of the Arizona Republic about threats the state’s biggest newspaper has received.

“While we’d like to think it’s different in Arizona, political turmoil increases the threat volume,” Executive Editor Greg Burton said in a written statement. “That was certainly true during the so-called ‘audit.’ Over the past year, we’ve worked on multiple occasions with internal security and local police to respond to specific threats, of which many, sadly, came after hyperpartisan rhetorical attacks.”

“Your days are numbered”

Kari Lake has made fighting the news media a centerpiece of her poll-topping campaign for the GOP nomination governor. She is a former local news anchor in Phoenix, so she is well-positioned to claim to be a truth-teller about journalists.

Her first television ad, purchased to be aired during news programs, opens like this:

“Hi, Arizona. I’m Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor. If you’re watching this ad right now, it means you’re in the middle of watching a fake news program. You know how to know it’s fake? Because they won’t even cover the biggest story out there — the rigged election of 2020.”

During interviews with news outlets, Lake regularly tries to turn the tables, questioning the interviewer and the news media in general, then trumpets those broadsides to her supporters. When CNN’s Kyung Lah challenged Lake’s assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, Lake went on attack.

“We don’t care what the media says,” she said. “The media is full of it, and I know it. I worked in the media. I know what you’re trying to do. You don’t give a damn about our elections. You’ve got a narrative, and you’re trying to push it.”

Her phrasing was sinister when interviewed by “60 Minutes Australia” recently. In a 60-second “sneak peek” promoting an episode to be aired Sunday, March 13, Lake abruptly stood up to leave the interview.

“If you want to keep pushing propaganda, your days are numbered,” she says.

She went further on Saturday, referring to the news media as "anti-American" in a new ad that singles out Canadian-American journalist Brahm Resnik, longtime reporter at KPNX Channel 12 in Phoenix.

“An easy enemy”

I asked the campaign consultant for one of Lake’s opponents, Karrin Taylor Robson, what he thought of Lake’s performances. Matt Benson is not just a political adviser working for the Veridus consultancy but also a former reporter for the Arizona Republic.

“By being on offense, she’s not having to answer questions,” Benson said of Lake. “She’s doing it as a defense mechanism. Her knowledge is an inch deep.”

But Robson herself hasn’t been above taking a stab at the media for apparent political gain. In February, the sports channel Fox Sports 1 rejected a Robson ad about border migration that other stations had been airing for weeks.

Robson’s campaign put out a fundraising appeal saying “The fake news is REFUSING to air our ad showing illegal immigrants FLOODING our southern border. They don’t want you to see the TRUTH. Rush an EMERGENCY $5 to stand against ruthless cancel culture and put Karrin’s ad back on the air.”

Rep. Mark Finchem, has regularly pointed to criticism by the news media as a reason to contribute to his campaign for secretary of state. Sen. Wendy Rogers, recently censured by the state Senate, has repeatedly said things like this Feb. 28 tweet: “The media are a bunch of Soros assets for the New World Order.”

She even called for the Arizona Mirror to be “banned from all events,” while simultaneously claiming she is a free-speech absolutist.

Obviously, news outlets should be open to criticism for our coverage, but this isn’t just about that. It’s about defining yourself against others.

These candidates can reach the audience they need for a GOP primary election through direct contact and plentiful conservative media outlets. They choose to confront legacy news outlets or liberal-leaning ones to galvanize their supporters.

Jennifer Mercieca, author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” told me: “The media is an easy enemy to target, and campaigns need an enemy to rally behind.”

“Also,” she added, “it feeds into their victim narrative as well as their ‘truth-teller’ narratives. They are telling the truth, but the media is corrupt and doesn’t want the public to know the truth. ‘Don’t trust the media, trust me.’ “

“Nullify the messenger”

This was the strategy of President Trump when he was office — discouraging his followers from believing negative news reports about him. And it’s a practice López Obrador has fully adopted in Mexico.

On Jan. 27, high-profile Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola revealed the life of luxury that López Obrador’s son lives in Houston, contrasting it with the austerity that the president extols and noting that the son’s house is owned by a government contractor.

The president went scorched earth in response, beginning Feb. 11, the day the fifth Mexican journalist this year was killed. He showed a slide revealing Loret’s supposed salary, saying it was 15 times the president’s, something the journalist has denied.

He’s continued his attacks on Loret and other critical news outlets day after day, even as the murders continued, prompting the European Union resolution Thursday to call on the president to stop his verbal attacks.

There’s no direct, causal connection between Lopez Obrador’s rhetoric and violence against journalists in Mexico, said Leopoldo Maldonado, regional director of an international free-speech organization called Article 19. But it can lead to self-censorship among the journalists he criticizes in Mexico City, and it creates a dangerous atmosphere in the states beyond Mexico’s capital.

“It’s a skillful strategy,” Maldonado said in Spanish. “Nullify the messenger and the message is lost.”

When the president took office, his daily press conferences were at first considered a victory for transparency, Maldonado said. They have become the opposite as the López Obrador uses the forum to attack his critics.

“When they (journalists) ask uncomfortable questions, they’re immediately attacked on social media,” Maldonado said. “It’s a well-coordinated, well-oiled machine. It works automatically when the president disparages someone or singles them out with their full name.”

My longtime friend and colleague Reyna Ramírez, a Sonoran who has covered López Obrador’s news conferences, told me that after she questioned the president in May 2020, “There began a wave of social media attacks. To this date, whenever I ask a question, the bots and supporters of the president swarm over me.”

The attacks have included two death threats that she reported to authorities.

The result for Mexico City journalists may simply be self-censorship — bad enough. When the same tactics are used out in the provinces, though, the result may be violence, or even death.

“Fertile ground for violence”

Common wisdom suggests that covering organized crime is what leads to journalists’ murders in Mexico, but that’s not true, Maldonado explained. It’s actually political stories that lead to the most aggressions against journalists.

Among the Mexican journalists who are under state protection due to threats, 61 percent cover politics. Fewer cover crime. But it gets confusing, Maldonado said, because when a journalist is attacked, it’s often by members of organized crime groups acting on behalf of politicians.

The same dynamic of violence against journalists, of course, has not proliferated north of the border, thank goodness. But Maldonado told me not to be sanguine about that.

“Be careful,” he said. “Because, of course, from what we’ve seen in the United States, polarization and social divisions are increasing. It’s fertile ground for violence to rise to another level.”

The difference, he noted, is the rule of law. In Mexico, impunity for killing journalists — or anyone else — is the rule. In the United States, though, the rule of law remains strong enough to offer protection from violence.

Still, it is no protection against politically motivated verbal attacks by candidates seeking advantage with populist voters.