DID TELEVISA TRY TO MANIPULATE MEXICAN ELECTION?

Mexico’s Televisa network, the world’s largest Spanish-speaking broadcaster, illegally set up a secret unit to aid the presidential campaign of PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, Britain’s Guardian newspaper disclosed today (Tuesday), just days before Sunday’s presidential election. The newspaper, which cited people familiar with the operations and signed contracts and other documents that it had seen, claimed that a secret Televisa team, referred to in the papers as “team Handcock” or, sometimes “team Hancock,” arranged for videos to be produced promoting Peña Nieto’s candidacy and smearing his principal opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. According to the newspaper, one of the leaders of the team was Alejandra Lagunes, the former head of Televisa Interactive Media, who is currently a member of Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign team. Three weeks ago the Guardian disclosed the existence of a cache of documents from 2005 detailing Televisa’s sale of favorable news coverage at the time to a number of politicians, including Peña Nieto. Televisa has questioned the authenticity of the documents.