By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Jan 29 2003 (IPS)

One of Mexico’s few independent television stations, whose installations were taken over in December by armed men acting on the orders of the powerful TV Azteca network, went back on the air this week after a legal process that cast doubt on the government’s impartiality.

Corporación de Noticias e Información (CNI), the small firm that runs the programming of the private Televisión del Valle de México (TVM), began broadcasting again Monday night, one month after its frequency was seized by force.

CNI, which since 1994 has operated Channel 40 on a government concession of a frequency that by law belongs to the state, provides news coverage that is frequently critical of the government, as well as alternative, novel programming.

Security employees of TV Azteca, one of Mexico’s largest networks, stormed the CNI/TVM transmission tower in the capital on Dec 27 on the argument that an international arbitration panel had ruled in its favour on a debt that it was owed by Channel 40.

A judge classified the incident, in which hooded armed men burst into the building, threatened several workers, and took over the transmission facilities, as a criminal act. Nevertheless, TV Azteca broadcast its own programming from the transmission tower until Jan. 9.

The government of Vicente Fox then decided to take over the broadcast facility until the two parties resolved their protracted legal battle.

Legislators, including members of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), academics in the field of communication, and columnists writing in Mexico’s leading newspapers criticised the stance taken by the government and demanded that the frequency be returned to Channel 40, which had been granted the concession.

They also called on authorities to condemn TV Azteca for taking over a transmission facility by force. But there was no official response to their complaints.

Upset with the government’s intervention in the case, CNI took legal action. In the end, a judge ruled in its favour, and ordered that the transmission tower be restored to its legitimate owner.

”In this case, the federal government has betrayed its role as a guarantor of the law, and through omissions and actions, it has backed one of the parties, TV Azteca, involved in a dispute in the courts” over a debt, wrote columnist Miguel Granados in the daily newspaper Reforma.

He argued that the stance taken by the government had cast its independence, as well as its respect for freedom of expression, into doubt.

Fox’s wife, Martha Sahagún, has been carrying out a charity campaign for indigenous children through TV Azteca, and the network’s newscasts are known for being favourable to the government.

Since October, President Fox and the two most powerful broadcasters, TV Azteca and Televisa, have been on especially good terms, thanks to a government decision to reduce the airspace that the networks were obligated to grant the state as a way of paying taxes.

Communications analyst Efraín Mesías said the government acted in a mistaken manner in the CNI-Azteca case, by favouring the powerful network.

Fox did the same thing that a president would have done during the era of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, Mesías argued.

The relationship between the media and the PRI was traditionally cozy, to the point that in the 1960s and 1970s a situation in which the owners of the major TV networks, radio stations and newspapers were actually members of the governing party and accepted any kind of censorship by the government was seen as normal.

The independence of the media began to gain ground in the 1980s, but the two leading networks remained identified with the PRI until 2000, when Fox became the first president from another party in seven decades.

Despite its serious financial problems, CNI Channel 40 gradually grew in ratings and carved out a space for itself in the market.

But as it continued to face financial difficulties, CNI-TVM signed an agreement with TV Azteca in 1998 for joint programming and advertising. The contract indicated that TV Azteca would lend its new partner over 20 million dollars.

In 2000, CNI-TVM broke off the agreement, accusing TV Azteca of trying to push it into bankruptcy in order to bid on and take over its frequency.

TV Azteca, which owns several channels and is listed on the stock market, and CNI, a small company with one channel and a shoestring budget, have been involved in a legal dispute ever since.

In December, the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce found in favour of both parties, ruling that TV Azteca, the plaintiff, was partially justified in suing for repayment of the debt, but that the arguments set forth in defence of CNI-TVM were also partially justified.

TV Azteca took the resolution out of context, and argued that the International Court of Arbitration had found in its favour, which gave it the right to seize the CNI-TVM transmission centre. But neither that decision nor the several rulings handed down by local judges gave it the right to take over another company’s facilities under Mexican law.

After the frequency was restored to CNI Channel 40 on Monday, TV Azteca executives said they would continue fighting in the courts.

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