As is common practice, the Times reporter had sent a letter to López Obrador’s spokesman asking for the president’s comment on the story before it was published, and included her telephone number as a means of contacting her.At his daily press briefing that day, the president displayed the letter on a large screen and read it aloud, including her phone number.In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, the New York Times wrote that “This is a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world leader at a time when threats against journalists are on the rise.”Asked about the issue Friday at a White House press briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “obviously, that’s not something we support.”“It is important for the press to be able to report on issues that matter to the American people freely and in a way that, obviously, you all feel secure and safe and in a way that you’re not being doxed or attacked. That is, you know, that is something that we will obviously reject,” she said,Mexico’s National Institute for Transparency and Information Access, the agency charged with upholding personal data laws, announced Thursday it is launching an investigation into the president’s actions.The head of the institute, Adrián Alcalá, wrote in his social media accounts that “all officials must obey the law and the Constitution, absolutely nobody is above them.”“It is regrettable that the president is not aware of how serious it is to release anyone’s phone number, especially a journalist,” Alcalá wrote. He noted that if the president is found to have violated the law, he could face fines.It is unclear how much of a deterrent that would be. López Obrador has frequently criticized the institute and has proposed abolishing it.Leopoldo Maldonado, of the press freedom group Article 19, said “Obviously, he is doing it with the intention of inhibiting the work of journalists and trying to prevent the publication of issues of public interest concerning his administration and the people around him.”“This is something the president has done before,” Maldonado noted.In 2022, López Obrador published a chart showing the income of Carlos Loret de Mola, a journalist who had written stories critical of the president.The president said he got such information — which Loret de Mola has said is wrong — “from the people,” but later said he based the chart in part on tax receipts, which would have been available only to the party who wrote them or the government tax agency.López Obrador regularly lashes out at the media, claiming they treat him unfairly and are part of a conservative conspiracy to undermine his administration.He has also expressed anger at what he claims is US tolerance for such media reports. It is the second time in recent weeks that the foreign press has published stories signaling that the US government has looked into alleged contacts between López Obrador allies and drug cartels.In late January, ProPublica, Deutsche Welle and InSight Crime published stories describing an earlier US investigation into whether López Obrador campaign aides took money from drug traffickers in exchange for facilitating their operations during an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2006.In that instance, López Obrador placed blame squarely at the feet of the US government and wondered aloud why he should continue discussing issues like immigration with a government that was trying to damage him.On Thursday US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “There is no investigation into President López Obrador.”
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