Photo composition showing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during on of his daily press conferences and, in the background, several YouTube logos and a screenshot with a YouTube error message. Photo: El Economista.
The general coordinator of social communication for the presidency of the Republic of Mexico, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, reported that, “without apparent justification,” YouTube suspended the channel of the Center for the Production of Informative and Special Programs (CEPROPIE), which broadcasts the morning press conferences of the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“We demand that the platform respect official accounts and broadcast the president’s conferences,” Ramírez wrote on his Twitter account.
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The daily press conferences, referred to in Spanish as mañaneras, have become a staple of AMLO’s administration. The mañaneras were initially a communication initiative launched by AMLO while he was mayor of the Federal District of Mexico City (2000-2005), and were resumed two days after he took office as Mexican president on December 23, 2018.
Recently, the mañaneras have been under attack from mainstream media and far-right figures alarmed by AMLO’s popularity and the approaching presidential elections, to be held in 2024. Millions of supporters inside and outside Mexico pay careful attention to AMLO’s press conferences.
Sin justificación aparente, @YouTube suspendió la cuenta de @Cepropie que transmite de manera oficial las conferencias mañaneras. Demandamos a la plataforma respetar las cuentas oficiales para transmitir las conferencias del presidente @lopezobrador_, @GobiernoMX y @cepropie.
— Jesús Ramírez Cuevas (@JesusRCuevas) May 31, 2023
Ramírez added, in statements issued to the press, that the suspension of the channel is part of “a censorship strategy” due to the impact of López Obrador’s morning press conference, which “millions of people watch.”
Regarding YouTube’s actions, he commented that the administration is in dialogue with Google and Youtube to ensure that the content that is broadcast each morning, including images, is official and “copyright free” and that, in the event of “citizen, business, or political” complaints, YouTube does not treat them as an ordinary complaints due to the official nature of the account.
🚨 Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, vocero de la presidencia de la República, aseguró que la cancelación del canal de Cepropie de YouTube, es parte de una "estrategia de censura" por el impacto que tienen las mañaneras del presidente López Obrador, la cual, afirmó, es vista por millones de… pic.twitter.com/ja7EjPfC0E
— El Universal (@El_Universal_Mx) May 31, 2023
The channel appears still appears on YouTube; however, on the morning of this Wednesday, May 31, the morning broadcast of López Obrador was not streamed, as it usually is.
On Tuesday, the broadcast on the YouTube channel of the Government of Mexico was interrupted. The video of that conference, which is typically over two hours long, is just over eight minutes long.
In addition to being broadcast on the CEPROPIE channel, López Obrador’s morning press conferences are broadcast through the president’s account on YouTube.
Last April, it was learned that López Obrador was one of the 10 most popular Spanish-speaking streamers in the first quarter of 2023, according to data from the Streams Charts platform. In that period, the president’s YouTube channel achieved 13.2 million hours of views.
(RT) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
