Media : Politics Makes Waves on Mexico’s Airwaves : Charging censorship, a popular interviewer quits, touching off a firestorm of debate over government’s role in journalism.

Next year’s presidential elections here are more than 10 months away, but dissidents are already crying foul.

A likely opposition candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, has accused ruling-party apparatchiks of hatching a series of dirty maneuvers--including organizing a group of sympathetic transvestites and indigents who recently crashed several of his campaign-trail events.

But national debate has focused on a broader, albeit related, theme: the critical role of the Mexican press, still evolving from its historical function as a mouthpiece for the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (known by its Spanish acronym as the PRI) and the nation’s president, the PRI’s standard-bearer.

“The Dirty War in the Media” is how the news magazine Proceso headlined its cover story last week. In particular, recent events have raised questions about the independence of radio, an influential mass medium still less inclined than the lively printed press to relay accounts critical of the nation’s rulers.

(Television, especially the unabashedly pro-government Televisa chain, is widely considered even more acquiescent than radio. Unlike newspapers and magazines, radio and television depend on government concessions and are thereby more susceptible to manipulation, analysts say.)

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari--under pressure to carry out democratic reforms as free-trade legislation is pending before a skeptical U.S. Congress--recently reiterated his pledge to open up media access for opposition voices.

But critics say recent disputes underline how the governing bloc’s media preeminence remains largely intact, particularly on the airwaves. Along with heavy-handed manipulation of coverage, free-press advocates cite self-censorship on the part of journalists who know they can go only so far without being sacked, losing crucial access or suffering other recriminations.

“With the elections coming, the government wants to ensure control over coverage, especially in the electronic media,” said Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, a journalist who is often critical of the government and who resigned as a radio talk-show host last month, citing alleged official efforts to censor his program.

His widely publicized departure, coming on the heels of several similar incidents, unleashed a furor of accusations, denials and media introspection.

The debate has focused on a central theme: the government’s purported desire to circumscribe the public exposure of Cardenas, the opposition hopeful who lost the 1988 presidential race to Salinas in a contest tarnished by allegations of fraud and dirty tricks. Pressure is both subtle and overt, say free-press activists.

As part of their campaign, critics say, authorities have sought to muzzle and discredit journalists such as Granados Chapa and Jorge G. Castaneda (a Los Angeles Times contributor)--whom officials view as sympathetic to Cardenas’ leftist stance. The pair, among others, cite government pressures as factors in their departures from the radio waves--allegations denied by the Salinas administration.

Two radio stations in Puebla abruptly canceled scheduled interviews with Cardenas this month, raising new questions among Mexican journalists about government pressure.

And also this month, the influential pro-government daily Excelsior canceled a scheduled appearance by Cardenas at a supposedly bipartisan forum on national issues, prompting sympathizers to remove their names from the guest list.

“This decision . . . is objectively part of an attitude--of which we have other lamentable examples--of blocking and provoking opposition against Cardenas,” Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a minority party senator allied to the opposition leader, stated in a letter to Excelsior management.

While polls have shown Cardenas’ support lagging, his populist base and his legendary lineage--his father, Lazaro Cardenas, is a former president and remains an enduring nationalist icon--cast him as potentially the most potent challenger to the governing party’s more than six-decade presidential hegemony here. In recent weeks, Cardenas’ campaign has had a rocky start--thanks, he says, to a series of political dirty tricks.

At rallies, supposed Cardenas supporters have hoisted a series of banners criticizing the United States and lauding international socialism, among other incendiary sentiments. Cardenas contends that this has been the work of provocateurs.

During campaign stops in Veracruz last month, Cardenas was surrounded by groups of admiring indigents (some shirtless) and transvestites--not constituencies that candidates in this morally conservative and mostly Roman Catholic nation normally seek to embrace publicly.

Asked who was behind the purported foul play, Cardenas told Proceso, “There aren’t many functionaries who can dictate this type of instructions and have someone carry them out.”

Throughout the last presidential contest, also marred by allegations of electoral shenanigans, Cardenas complained bitterly about how the mainstream press, particularly radio and television, gave him short shrift. This political season, his voice remains a distant one on the airwaves.

In fact, it was an interview with Cardenas on Sept. 20 that Granados Chapa said signaled the death knoll for his “La Ciudad” (“The City”) morning political chat program.

Shortly after the interview aired, Granados Chapa said, his outraged boss at Nucleo Radio Mil, a chain of seven stations, accused him of “impertinence” for having invited Cardenas. Henceforth, the commentator said he was told, he would be obliged to notify his superiors in advance of guest lists--a condition he found unacceptable. He then resigned.

Officials of the radio station and the Salinas administration were quick to dismiss Granados Chapa’s assertions that the government had put pressure on the chain for months to silence the provocative commentator.

Not true, declared Secretary of Government Patrocinio Gonzalez Blanco Garrido, whose ministry controls broadcast concessions. “We continue to guarantee the free exercise of social communication in our country,” said Gonzalez.

However, the chain in question is in a particularly delicate regulatory position. The company is fighting a government effort to revoke its right to run the city’s only English-language station.

Authorities insist that the revocation action is a technical matter completely unrelated to the Granados Chapa affair.

Linking the radio station’s licensing problems with the departure of its commentator “is totally distant from reality and truth,” F. Guillermo Salas, the chain’s president, stated in a letter. Instead, the radio executive characterized the resignation as an internal difference of opinion.

After the furor, Granados Chapa said he was contacted by Salinas, who offered to place his program anew on a government radio station. The journalist declined.

As for Salinas’ vows of enhanced media access for the opposition, the veteran newsman is skeptical.

“I won’t say the president directly orders actions against me and others, but there’s no doubt that he allows these things to happen,” said Granados Chapa.