http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/opinion/suing-journalists-in-mexico.html 2016-09-12 14:15:37 Suing Journalists in Mexico The impact of Mexico’s new anticorruption law depends on the ability of journalists to do critical work without facing specious lawsuits. === This summer, responding to public outrage over a spate of government corruption scandals, Mexican lawmakers passed a strong anticorruption law that requires public officials to be more transparent about their finances. Whether that will help end A recent flurry of specious lawsuits filed against journalists — and a troubling court decision in May that lifted monetary caps on libel damages — are having a chilling effect on investigative reporting and criticism. Of all the challenges that have historically stymied the Mexican press, including violence and a habit of self-censorship to appease advertisers, the unjustified legal exposure journalists now face is a relatively easy one to solve. Mexican lawmakers could pass a law making it harder for public officials and other public figures to sue for libel. President The most prominent journalist sued recently is Carmen Aristegui, a broadcast journalist who in 2014 led a team that broke the first major story about alleged impropriety by Mr. Peña Nieto. Ms. Aristegui and her colleagues meticulously documented an arrangement under which a construction company that had been awarded lucrative government contracts built a mansion for the president’s wife, Angélica Rivera. The news organization that employed them at the time, MVS, which depends heavily on government advertising, refused to run the story, according to Ms. Aristegui. The journalists published it independently and later chronicled the saga and its fallout in a “This has raised an alarm,” Edison Lanza, the One plaintiff is Humberto Moreira, the former governor of the state of Coahuila, who filed lawsuits in July against two journalists over articles that referred to Mr. Peña Nieto, who has never fully explained the suspicious real estate arrangements,