“Mark the agenda.” The government accuses the media and influential journalists of this, as if it were heresy. Especially those who hold power roughly and who have found a way to “stand out” in technological communication tools and try to impose their priorities as if they were the only ones among the people, and woe betide those who dare to prioritize something else!

We’ve seen it, we’ve lived it, here in Ecuador for over a decade, recently. We have seen this from the very beginning of Trump’s government in the United States, when he had a live fight with Jorge Ramos, and then announced that he would answer the citizens directly through POTUS, the official account of the American president. We see this with President Bukele of El Salvador, who managed to establish his narrative against violence, turning the Mara into an enemy to be destroyed, and the agenda of that country was colored by repression that was applauded.

a big empty place

But the political marketing geniuses, after much trial and error, seem to be confirming the ideal mechanism for “agenda setting” in Mexico. The surprise was great when he recently woke up to the news that in the prestigious ranking its president, almost seventy-year-old Manuel Andrés López Obrador, a historical man of the left, is sixth among the oldest ribbons Spanish-speaking world (content creator in direct contact), among a series of century-old celebrities from the digital galaxy.

AMLO’s pesky critics

What gives AMLO (his famous acronym) such a surprising distinction? And we must add the second place among the global leaders that it gave him Financial Times 2021. And also second place, after Bukele, given by Cid Gallup in his recent measurement of Latin American presidents.

Peru’s Congress has declared Mexican President López Obrador ‘persona non grata’

The answer would be in the “morning” conferences, those that take place daily online and that set a good part of the Mexican public agenda, because the professional media take what is said from there and, in many cases, without confrontation. But what is said, according to the criteria of fellow political analysts, is not always news, as one would expect, but many of their statements are propaganda. Instead of informing, explaining and clarifying whether national matters are relevant, the Mexican president mostly obscures public debate with his “mornings” via social media.

Since August 2022, he would have made 86,917 false or misleading statements in his press conferences…

Some of his opponents even dare to say that he uses the space for slander and lies, every day. And they tried to document it with numbers:

By August 2022, he would have made 86,917 false or misleading statements in his press conferences, according to Spin monitoring, with known and proven verification and verification techniques. Or what is the same, an average of 94 falsehoods at each of those conferences.

AMLO then found the formula for “setting the agenda”. But his, propaganda, is heaven for the government. And the media, out of habit, restraint or fear, serve as amplifiers of these official truths that do not clarify, they obscure. I have no doubt, the model will be imitated. (OR)