The leftist Mexican government is moving to tighten its control over the media, according to an August 17, 2026, Wall Street Journal editorial by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who specializes in Latin America. O’Grady traces what she describes as the erosion of democratic pluralism in Mexico from the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) into the administration of his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum.
One important development was the 2025 abolition of Mexico’s constitutionally autonomous Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) and its replacement by the Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones (CRT), a government administrative regulator.
The CRT now regulates telecommunications and broadcasting. More controversially, proposed rules concerning the “rights of audiences” would require broadcasters to exercise greater diligence regarding the accuracy or veracity of news reports and could subject broadcasters to sanctions. Press-freedom advocates have warned that giving a government-controlled regulator a role in determining whether news content is truthful could encourage self-censorship.
This has drawn comparisons with recent actions by the Trump administration’s FCC, particularly under chairman Brendan Carr, which critics have accused of using regulatory powers to pressure broadcasters over their editorial content.
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