A secretive unit inside Mexico’s predominant TV network set up and funded a campaign for Enrique Pena Nieto, who is the favorite to win Sunday’s presidential election, according to people familiar with the operation, and documents.
The new revelations of bias within Televisa, the world’s biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, challenge the company’s claim to be politically impartial as well as Pena Nieto’s insistence that he never had a special relationship with Televisa.
The unit — known as “team Handcock,” in what sources say was a Televisa codename for the politician and his allies — commissioned videos promoting the candidate and his PRI party and rubbishing the party’s rivals in 2009. The documents suggest the team distributed the videos to thousands of e-mail addresses, and pushed them on Facebook and YouTube, where some of them can still be seen.
The nature of the relationship between Pena Nieto and Televisa has been a key issue in Sunday’s election since the development last month of a student movement focused on perceived media manipulation of public opinion in the candidate’s favor.
Televisa refused to comment on the specifics of the documents, but denied suggestions it had favored the PRI, saying it had done political work for all the major parties.
The documents, which consist of scanned copies of signed contracts as well as other instructions and proposals, suggest that Televisa subsidiaries and named Televisa executives took part in the project, putting their employees and knowhow to work to the benefit of Pena Nieto in the buildup to crucial 2009 midterm congressional elections.
The material follows the publication by the Guardian three weeks ago of a cache of documents from 2005 that appeared to detail the network’s sale of favorable coverage to a number of politicians, including Pena Nieto.
The documents also appeared to contain evidence of a smear campaign orchestrated from the company against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who at the time was preparing his first presidential candidacy. Lopez Obrador is currently Pena Nieto’s closest rival in the presidential race, though most polls put him more than 10 points behind the leader.
Televisa has dismissed these allegations as libelous, questioned the authenticity of the documents and demanded an apology.
According to several well-placed sources, the Handcock project (“Hancock” in some documents) emerged in the runup to the 2009 midterm congressional elections.
The resounding victory that Pena Nieto delivered for the PRI in the State of Mexico in those elections helped cement his claim to the presidential candidacy.
One source said the team worked in semi-secrecy in Televisa’s offices, bound by confidentiality contracts and encouraged not to use Televisa e-mail addresses or Televisa IPs to distribute material. A second source said external companies contracted by Televisa to produce videos and other materials destined for the Web were also bound by secrecy because of confidentiality agreements.
One of the leaders of the team was Alejandra Lagunes, then director-general of Televisa Interactive Media, the sources said. Lagunes later left the company and went on to help Pena Nieto’s chosen successor as governor of the State of Mexico win the local election last year. She currently holds the position of “co-ordinator of digital and social network strategy” in Pena Nieto’s presidential campaign team.
A PRI spokesman, Aurelio Nuno, denied a request to speak with Lagunes.
“The campaign and the candidate Enrique Pena Nieto has no knowledge of the existence of the contract that the Guardian showed us,” he said. “Enrique Pena Nieto reiterates that he has never had a special relation with Televisa. Both as governor and as presidential candidate, Pena Nieto has sought a cordial and respectful relationship with all the media.”
Further evidence of Televisa-commissioned work to promote Pena Nieto comes in a document apparently sent by an employee of the US company Blue State Digital enquiring about payment after the completion of “several tasks for Televisa.” The subsequent list includes “many conference calls and meetings to discuss the Web strategy for Handcock.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not