Twitter Mobs Bash Those Who Dare Challenge AMLO in Mexico Press
- Lopez Obrador defends his right to criticize the ‘fifi’ media
- Raising concerns about widening divisions, stifling discourse
Photographer: Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo
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The reporter, a woman who didn’t identify herself, asked Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador if he was investigating nepotism in government. Within minutes, social media was ablaze with posts calling her a cow, a member of the gestapo and a “lazy pig” for not getting up from her seat to address the president.
Her crime was quizzing the extraordinarily popular leader of Mexico, a man-of-the-people leftist who holds a press conference every weekday but doesn’t appreciate members of the press confronting him. Lopez Obrador’s devotees on the internet don’t either, unleashing invective-filled hate campaigns against offending correspondents that appear to be widely driven by bots.