By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Mar 15 2000 (IPS)

The Mexican government repealed the official news agency’s new role in selling advertising, a decision that deactivated local protests and calmed the concerns of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).

The Interior Ministry announced Tuesday evening that it would annul Notimex’s powers to serve as intermediary in the sales of government-related advertising.

The Ernesto Zedillo government had decreed Jan 31 that Notimex would take on these advertising duties in addition to its role as an international news agency.

The new Notimex role was adopted within the limits of Mexican law, but after assessing “the legitimate concerns of different sectors,” the government chose to repeal its decision, according to the Interior Ministry.

In this way, authorities hope “to contribute to a climate of certainty that communications in the country are expressed in an environment that prioritises freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the right to current information.”

Some 60 million voters will cast ballots in the July 2 presidential elections in Mexico, a nation governed for the last 71 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Critics pointed out that Notimex, with its new power, could bias the distribution of campaign advertising.

The information media, advertising agencies and communications experts warned in recent days that Notimex’s new government- granted role risked creating a monopoly in the advertising market.

This Notimex episode “once again highlights the need for greater transparency in government spending on advertising,” said Romeo Pardo, researcher at the Communications Department at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).

“The money authorities earmark for advertising constitutes a veritable ‘black box’ for society, which does not know how much is spent in this area,” he explained.

Pardo told IPS that non-governmental organisations are demanding the creation of a citizen centre entrusted with watching over public resources channeled into advertising.

The centre would be a plural, civic organisation, which is “indispensable for removing the discretional character in managing these government expenditures, which could be used to reward or punish certain media outlets,” said the researcher.

The power the government gave Notimex to decide the fate of government advertising – with a 15 percent price reduction -, “opened large gaps so that this agency, running at a deficit, would monopolise the profits,” he commented.

“The lucky part for the country is that it has a freedom regulated by a code of ethics, which is based on transparency.”

But “discretionary management of the advertising market turned out to be difficult for an agency whose history is marked by partiality on information issues,” Pardo explained.

The expert pointed out that ‘Reforma’ – a newspaper that has operated for the last seven years with private advertising, in contrast with the great number of media outlets that depend on government ads – was the first to call attention to Notimex’s new government-favoured role.

“In the information era, where political campaigns are no longer decided by direct citizen contact with the candidates, but by their presence in the media, great pains must be taken for neutrality among communicators,” said a Reforma editorial.

The daily, in a front-page story titled “The Price of Liberty,” made its rejection public regarding the Notimex-government advertising agreement, saying the contract would compromise the agency’s journalistic work.

Before the Interior Ministry’s decision was announced, a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association’s (IAPA) directors, held Monday and Tuesday in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, approved a resolution calling on the government to dissolve or sell Notimex.

The IAPA based its petition on the fact that the Mexican government finances “a supposed news agency with taxpayers money, broadening its activities and making it an advertising agency.”

The IAPA resolution triggered an internal debate about the organisation’s “jurisdiction” in formulating petitions of this type.

Antonio Ornes, editor of the Dominican daily ‘El Caribe,’ affirmed in Cancun that the IAPA lacks the power to ask the Mexican government to get rid of its news agency.

But UAM researcher Pardo emphasised that the public must not lose sight of the fact that, in addition to “credibility, some media, like Reforma, are gaining leadership positions and a great deal of power.”

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