The Mexican government has admitted to staging a dramatic kidnap rescue for the benefit of a prime-time television audience.
The raid, televised on Dec. 9, in which Mexico's equivalent of the FBI burst into a farmhouse at dawn, guns at the ready, to subjugate four alleged kidnappers and liberate three victims, had been presented by the government as proof that it was winning the battle against organized crime.
This week presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said that it was staged and called it a mistake.
The authorities had sought to share the blame with journalists they claim asked police to replay arrests carried out hours before.
"All we tried to do was serve you, the media," the attorney general, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, told a news conference. "That and show the public that there is an institution that is working for them, that has successes and that arrests people."
The two main TV companies, which both broadcast the images, have been embarrassed by the revelation. Not only did they film the swoop on the farmhouse just south of Mexico City, but they also followed the heavily armed police team inside and stuck microphones in the faces of the detainees and the three kidnap victims.
The revelation has also raised questions about the authenticity of other events presented as live in the past.
Televisa, the country's biggest network, has sacked the reporter who worked on the farmhouse story. Sources inside the corporation said an internal investigation has been launched.
Television Azteca has insisted it received an early morning tip-off from the police and merely sent a reporter and camera crew to the scene.
Official confirmation that this was, in fact, not-so-reality TV was prompted by the publicity given to one of the alleged kidnappers arrested on camera. Frenchwoman Florence Cassez says she was detained the day before the raid, kept overnight by police and planted inside the farmhouse, where her ex-boyfriend lived, shortly before the TV crews arrived.
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