News Space for Sale

On the front page of its literary section one day last week, Mexico City's daily Novedades (News) printed what it called "testimony against that type of journalism that ought to disappear." Part of the testimony was a letter lifted from the Cuban embassy last winter after Fidel Castro's bearded revolutionaries toppled the Batista regime. Written by Oscar de la Torre, Batista's Ambassador to Mexico at the time, the letter confirmed what everyone had long suspected--that Aldo Baroni, columnist for Mexico City's daily Excelsior, had taken money to say nice things about Dictator Batista. The ambassador wrote to a presidential aide in Havana: "Our friend Villaboy gave me a check for $4,000. Following instructions of the President [i.e., Batista], I endorsed the check to Senor Aldo Baroni."

In Mexico, there was little reason for Columnist Baroni to be deeply disturbed by the exposure. He was following an established custom, a journalistic practice common in many places in Latin America. Many a Mexican newsman is for sale; a chief duty of government press officers is to disburse igualas (fees) to reporters.

Good Money = Good Press. In their appetite for these hidden assets, Mexico's underpaid newsmen, whose visible salaries range from $2 to $8.13 a day, leave hardly a news beat unexploited. Bullfighters commonly reserve up to one-third of a season's take for newspaper, radio and TV critics, who might otherwise ungraciously give top billing to the bulls. For pesos the journalists make lackluster movies seem works of art, and prizefighters jewels of virtuosity. And woe betide the motorist who, after an accident, neglects to grease a police reporter's outstretched palm: next day's story may suggest the innocent driver was drunk or (if he is married) in the diverting company of an unidentified senorita.

The art reaches its fullest flower among the political writers and columnists. Many of them buy blocks of space from their publishers, reap tidy subsidiary fortunes by reselling it--at higher rates--to anyone in the market for their wares, which can be either adulation or silence. Among the buyers are minor government officials, politicians and industrialists. The national railroads are steady customers, happy to pay for the privilege of keeping minor train wrecks out of the news; press faultfinding with Pemex rose sharply after the state-owned oil company dropped its annual reporters' subsidy of 9,000,000 pesos.

Truth Can Pay. Many Mexican publishers tolerate these practices; some sell news space themselves. Advertising income is low--a full page in Excelsior (circ. 95,000) sells for $504--but the editorial columns command a fat price: one Mexico City magazine makes more from that source than from ads.

A few Mexican voices deplore journalistic corruption, sometimes with mild effect. Some reporters and editors are scrupulously honest. Mexican President Lopez Mateos, who personally endorsed the Reporters Union's announced cleanup campaign, also ordered a cut in government handouts to reporters. But none of the solutions proposed--more pay, stringent rules of conduct for reporters--are steadfastly based in the simple, workable journalistic premise that truth pays.

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