Part variety show, part sermon: inside Mexico’s presidential briefings

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

After tears, a raffle and a song sung by his wife, Mexico’s former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador finally said goodbye to his loyal audience at the end of September. The last edition of La Mañanera, the daily marathon news briefing he created, ended with live son jarocho music and tamales and barbacoa for the reporters attending.

Part variety show, part sermon, part propaganda exercise, the conferences often ran more than three hours long and were central to keeping the former leader’s approval ratings above 60 per cent.

Now his handpicked successor Claudia Sheinbaum has taken up the mantle. As a former academic energy engineer, however, her delivery is notably more direct. There are fewer insults and the first conference was wrapped up in 90 minutes without a single laugh. It was capped with a video promoting the virtues of healthy eating.

The stark change in tone illustrates the difficulty Mexico’s first female president faces in matching her predecessor’s popularity.

López Obrador would crack jokes and give winding Mexican history lessons. He would push his “us against them” narrative and loudly attack critics, often publishing their personal information.

Across Mexico, pensioners eating breakfast and workers on the bus would watch live or see catch-up highlights on social media. López Obrador’s personal YouTube channel has 4.5mn subscribers, more than former US President Donald Trump.

“It was a reality show . . . completely raw, what you see is what you get,” said Luis Antonio Espino, a communications consultant who wrote a book about the president’s conferences. “For his followers . . . it was more important that he was authentic, showing himself as he is, than telling the truth or accountability.”

In Mexico, this regular access to power was new. The previous president, Enrique Peña Nieto, gave just a handful of press conferences in six years. López Obrador opted to follow in the footsteps of other left-wing leaders in Latin America who hogged the airwaves. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, for example, used to take calls on a Sunday show called Aló Presidente!

López Obrador’s conferences dominated Mexico’s news agenda. Cabinet secretaries watched to find out the latest government line. He gave almost no interviews and fomented a new crop of political coverage from admiring YouTubers.

Calling their craft “militant journalism”, YouTubers usually occupied the front rows. They would ask soft questions, offering up opportunities for the president to lambast his “adversaries” or talk up a government policy.

“You are like a Kenyan runner . . . many of us ask how do you do it?,” was one such question asked. “You are a giant . . . you will leave 50mn orphans, what is your message to them?” was another.

“No one that watches one of us expects neutrality,” said Manuel Pedrero, a 21-year-old with his own popular YouTube channel. “That clarity has allowed us to reach a lot of people, because the same thing happens with right-wing channels that don’t get criticised.”

As a reporter with “traditional media” it could be unnerving to witness a room of reporters so openly divided.

Some would hiss and laugh at López Obrador’s jokes and attacks on fellow journalists. Sometimes reporters on each “side” would publicly insult one another.

Sheinbaum is under pressure to continue her predecessor’s format. A section López Obrador called “the who’s who in lies” — where an official provided a contemptuous run through of critical stories about the government — has become the “lie detector”.

“She has a different style to López Obrador but deep down it’s the same thing,” Espino said.

Yet even if the substance is the same, López Obrador’s fans will miss his style. The atmosphere at Sheinbaum’s conference is certainly more professional. But drama was part of what kept people interested. As one regular attendee told me: “The Mañanera could deflate.”

[email protected]