Mexico’s federal government is taking legal action against two reputable border city newspapers for printing false stories about officials covering up the number of Coronavirus deaths and that a single hospital in Ciudad Juarez recorded more than 80 deceased patients.
On their April 14 editions, El Diario de Juarez (Juarez Daily) and El Diario de Chihuahua (Chihuahua Daily) published stories claiming Mexican health officials were hiding the number of fatalities by classifying them as atypical pneumonia. For their front-page articles, the sister newspapers cited a local attorney who claimed to represent whistleblowing doctors. The attorney provided the newspapers with photographs that purported to show bodies in black bags piled in a room.
One day after the story was published, a Mexican federal health official told El Diario de Juarez that the photographs were false and the hospital in the reporting had only 13 fatalities at the time.
Citing the health state of emergency, Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior announced it took legal actions to sanction El Diario de Juarez and El Diario de Chihuahua for “promoting disinformation,” a prepared statement said.
Governor of Chihuahua Javier Corral, who is from a rival political party to Mexico’s current ruling establishment, also took to social media to denounce the articles, claiming that they showed a lack of ethics and promoted yellow journalism. According to Corral, the photographs were from a hospital in Ecuador and have appeared in several sensationalized articles worldwide.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Tony Aranda from Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project contributed to this report