Journalists battle a fake news epidemic in Mexico
Fact-checkers debunk rumors about a Nazi, a nude photo and more in run-up to election.
MEXICO CITY — No, a candidate in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election did not pose nude with a drag queen.
No, the wife of another candidate is not the granddaughter of a Nazi.
And no, a third contender did not vow to win the election by buying votes.
These and other rumors have been debunked by a team of young journalists fighting against falsehoods that have circulated widely in the run-up to Mexico’s July 1 vote.
Hunched over laptops in their headquarters in an old house in Mexico City, about two dozen fact-checkers work around the clock knocking down fake news and verifying campaign claims that are correct. Their platform, Verificado 18, or Verified 18, works like a news service, with their factchecks disseminated throughout the country via a large network of newspapers and online sites.
Fake news is everywhere in Mexico, pushed on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter by sham news sites and armies of digital bots. It’s been a problem here since before the issue gained global attention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with online disinformation campaigns playing a key role in Mexican politics since the country’s 2012 presidential race.
“There’s an information war,” said Alba Mora Roca, a video journalist who is helping lead the effort. “We’re defenders of the truth.”
The platform was forged by two news websites — Mexico’s Animal Politico and AJ+ — and an organization called PopUp Newsroom, which led similar efforts to fact-check, verify and debunk claims made during the last U.S. election and in France’s 2017 presidential campaign. About 70 other outlets, including some of Mexico’s most-read newspapers, have signed on to distribute the content.
Although it launched only last month, the platform is already having an impact, said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst and a professor at CIDE, a public research center in Mexico City.
Misinformation designed to smear candidates spreads like a virus, Bravo said. Verificado 18, he said, is “creating the antibodies to combat fake news.”
The group has debunked dozens of wildly circulated internet myths and fake videos. In one clip manipulated with superimposed images and fake Spanish subtitles, a pair of Russian news anchors appear to announce that Russian President Vladimir Putin is endorsing Mexico’s populist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Verificado 18 confirmed that the subtitles were made up, and the original newscast had nothing to do with Mexico.
The group also recently proved that an alleged communique from the Venezuelan government about its plans to intervene in Mexico’s election was actually fake. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the husband of current presidential candidate Margarita Zavala, had tweeted a widely shared copy of the fraudulent letter.
While each of the five candidates on the presidential ballot has been targeted by made-up smears, Lopez Obrador is the most frequent victim, according to Verificado 18. Roughly 80% of fake stories, memes and videos identified by the group have targeted Lopez Obrador, who is running for president for a third time and is 10 points ahead of his nearest competition, center-right candidate Ricardo Anaya. Much of the content targeting Lopez Obrador originates from several Facebook pages that are designed to look like news websites and have hundreds of thousands of followers.
Globally, there is more awareness than ever about the dangers of misinformation spread on social media after reports that Russia used fake news to try to influence the U.S. election, and British firm Cambridge Analytica mined Facebook data to target voters. During the 2016 race, millions of American voters were exposed to fake news stories spread on Facebook and Twitter, including one that said Pope Francis had endorsed then-candidate Donald Trump.
Despite growing concern, many users don’t have the media literacy to determine what is real news, Mora said. At the offices of Verificado 18 on a recent afternoon, she pulled up on her computer screen a highly circulated “poll” supposedly from the New York Times that showed Mexico’s third-place candidate, Jose Antonio Meade, in first place.
“We journalists know that this doesn’t look like a real New York Times poll,” she said, pointing out aspects of the graphic that appeared unprofessional. “But not everyone knows that.”
Manipulation of news coverage in Mexico predates the invention of social media and smartphones.
President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or the PRI, held its uninterrupted grip on power from 1929 to 2000 thanks in part to its alliance with Mexico’s leading television broadcaster, Televisa, historians say. The station’s former owner of once referred to himself as “a soldier for the PRI.”
For decades, Televisa famously neglected opposition candidates in Mexican elections while devoting glowing coverage to the PRI’s nominees. When it did cover challengers, it sometimes falsely tied them controversial figures, such as when the network aired a photo of 1988 opposition candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas next to pictures of Fidel Castro and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Mora said Verificado 18’s efforts are paying off. In an era of increasing division, she feels like she’s working to bring people closer to the truth — and closer together.
Which reminds us. No, Meade never said Mexicans must get used to gasoline and electricity price hikes. No, Lopez Obrador’s son does not own a black Lamborghini. And no, Forbes did not name Peña Nieto’s wife as one of the richest women in the world.