Mexican journalist fired after meeting with fugitive crime boss

The video is jumpy in spots, it shows signs of having been heavily edited and its audio is not always intelligible.

What is clear is the presence of a well-known Mexican journalist, Eliseo Caballero, meeting with one of the country’s most-wanted crime bosses, Servando Gomez, alias La Tuta. Caballero and a companion appear to be giving La Tuta advice on how to work the media.

And, at one point, the head of Michoacan’s most notorious drug-and-extortion cartel appears to hand money over to the journalist.

The video, aired this week by the MVS news operation, which said it was anonymously delivered to the station’s studios, is the latest of numerous such tapes that have shown Gomez meeting and chatting with Michoacan mayors, businesspeople and senior state officials. Several of them have been detained as a result.

Caballero’s bosses wasted no time. Televisa, Mexico’s giant broadcaster, announced that he had been fired and said it had no knowledge of the meeting before the video surfaced.

“Our audience can be assured that there is no room in this organization for those who would violate the confidence or endanger the credibility that the public, day after day, entrusts to Televisa News,” its statement said.

Caballero sought to defend himself during several radio and television appearances. The video was made late last year, he said, adding that he was actually forced to attend the meeting and that if he had known money was going to be offered, he would not have gone.

In the taped conversation, Gomez seems to be concerned that his organization, the Knights Templar, is losing the PR battle to vigilante groups that have risen in the last two years to take their towns back from the cartel. [link in Spanish]

Caballero can be heard telling the drug boss to get his message out more quickly, using posters or any other form of communication to attract coverage. “Send messages, send emails, send photos, send whatever,” he says.

His comments indicate it was not his first meeting with Gomez.

Despite the numerous videos and evident meetings with officials, including the son of the former governor of Michoacan, and despite a massive deployment of security forces in the state in recent months, the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto insists it cannot locate Gomez.

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