Veteran Mexico News Anchor Ends an Era

For three decades, he was the trusted face of a one-party system--a television anchorman who was part Walter Cronkite, part government propagandist. On Monday, Jacobo Zabludovsky, 69, Mexico’s veteran TV news director, finally stepped down in what many called the end of an era for the country’s media.

“Mexico has changed. It’s a different country,” he said in an interview hours before his last broadcast. “During many years, we had practically one party, and a government in which the executive didn’t have a legislative or judicial counterweight. We have now overcome this. . . . This is reflected in the news.”

The unflappable Zabludovsky, with his square glasses and stiff, formal mannerisms, was more than just the country’s most influential journalist. As news director of Televisa, a longtime TV monopoly, he shaped what millions of Mexicans thought about their country. But he has come under increasing criticism for the network’s bias in favor of the government and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has dominated Mexico for 70 years.

Zabludovsky, who suffers from prostate cancer, said he was stepping down for health reasons. But even his own network acknowledged that the departing anchorman symbolized a style of journalism out of sync with a growing democracy.

“He was part of a stage of development in which Televisa fit in perfectly with the national system,” Felix Cortes, vice president of Televisa’s news programs, told a recent news conference. “But the country changed after the 1985 earthquake” in Mexico City--which prompted an explosion of citizen activism that translated into demands for democracy. “We must adjust.”

Zabludovsky’s last newscast Monday night was interrupted by a congratulatory call from President Ernesto Zedillo, who called him a “very special witness and communicator of the recent history of Mexico and the world.”

Zabludovsky was a part of Mexican television from its outset, going to work in 1950 as a writer on its first news show. Twenty years later, he went on the air with “24 Horas” (“24 Hours”), which became the country’s top-rated evening news broadcast. During these years, Televisa virtually monopolized Mexican television, in addition to owning radio stations, magazines and newspapers. There was no doubt about where Televisa’s loyalties lay; the owner of the media empire, Emilio Azcarraga, once called his reporters “soldiers of the president”--who has come from the ranks of the PRI since 1929.

Primitivo Rodriguez, a political analyst, recalled how the government used Zabludovsky’s broadcasts to hurt the political opposition. In the mid-1970s, Rodriguez says, he and other activists sought registration of a new left-wing political party. They emphasized to then-Interior Minister Mario Moya Palencia that their group had broad support; in fact, they could call out 100,000 demonstrators in Mexico City, they boasted.

“I think you can get 100,000 into the streets,” the minister agreed, according to Rodriguez. But, he added with irony, “If Jacobo says it was 3,000, then it was only 3,000.” The public would believe the television.

Even today, the combined readership of all Mexican newspapers is a fraction of Televisa’s daily viewers.

Zabludovsky recently acknowledged for the first time in the Mexican press that he had often received government orders on how to play news items in past years. “There were constant pressures,” he said in the interview Monday. “We had a narrow margin for action, under the circumstances of the era.”

Still, Zabludovsky has been such an institution--bringing the country’s every disaster and triumph into Mexican living rooms--that millions believe him. A poll published Sunday by the Mexico City daily Reforma found 56% of those surveyed thought he should stay on.

But the broadcaster has been increasingly criticized in the past decade. In the 1988 presidential elections, Televisa heavily promoted Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the PRI candidate, provoking a backlash from supporters of left-wing candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, widely considered to have been denied victory through government fraud. Televisa was also attacked for its support of Zedillo, the current PRI president, in his bid for office in 1994.

With increasing political pluralism in Mexico, and the launch of a competing network--TV Azteca--Televisa has begun to change. Observers agree it was much more balanced in its coverage of pivotal congressional and state elections in July.

As Zabludovsky’s ratings have slipped, Televisa has begun planning a new style of coverage. The change has been hastened by the death in April of Azcarraga, the network’s longtime owner, who was succeeded by his son, Emilio, 29.

At the news conference announcing Zabludovsky’s replacement--TV journalist Guillermo Ortega, 43--Televisa officials said the new programs would feature better coverage and less bureaucratic language. “We are trying to get away from the journalism of the press release,” said Cortes, the Televisa executive. The younger Azcarraga has said his network will no longer favor the PRI.

Many analysts say Televisa is desperately trying to rebuild its credibility by replacing Zabludovsky. But Cortes refused to criticize the anchor, bringing up another Mexican icon. “The only person who has 90% credibility in this country is the Virgin of Guadalupe,” he said.