NYT STUMBLES IN MEXICO; DILLON, KOED

Errors Damaged The Daily's Credibility

After having won the Pulitzer prize in journalism for reports on the
investigations of the DEA against two Mexican politicians, the
correspondent Sam Dillon has just been removed. One month before the
Mexican presidential elections that are of great concern in the US, the New
York Times newspaper will have to settle on the reports of two new
correspondents who will confront, for the first time, the Mexican political
struggle.

The story of the exit by Dillon and his wife Julia Preston, also a New York
Times correspondent in Mexico, has attracted public attention. The
justification by Dillon was to ask for special permission from the Times to
leave his reporting of the unprecedented Mexican electoral process because
he's going to write a book.

But this story is about the loud fall of a correspondent who had achieved
the heights of having been given a Pulitzer prize. And a revealing fact is
that this year, for the first time in 14 years, the New York Times,
considered the Cathedral of journalism, did not receive a single Pulitzer.

The journalist Cynthia Cotts, in her "Press Clips" column of the Village
Voice in New York, revealed, on May 24th, the change for Dillon.

Replacing Dillon and Preston will come to Mexico, to the bureau of the NYT,
Ginger Thompson and Tim Weiner. Thompson is a journalist who worked for the
Baltimore Sun and Weiner for the Philadelphia Enquirer. The two were chosen
personally by Joe Lelyved, executive director of the New York daily, in the
newspaper's duty to the North American interests in the Mexican electoral
process.

The exit of Dillon was preceded by many rumors. But above all those
regarding the stories about his mercenary coverage of some Mexican affairs.
The North American journalist Al Giordano, executive editor of the internet
publication www.narconews.com, and specialist in themes of drug
trafficking, revealed last week the story of a threatening phone call that
he received from Dillon.

Giordano investigated the governmental threats against Mario Menendez
Rodriguez, director of the newspaper Por Esto! Of Yucatan, for his critical
coverage against Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, owner of Banamex (The National
Bank of Mexico). Menendez denounced, with photographs, the use of Hernandez
properties to receive shipments of drugs in the Mexican Caribbean.

Giordano recounted in his report, "Times Dumps Dillon," that he received a
"dark message" from Dillon: "Dillon made various threats of what he would
do to discredit me if I published the story of Menendez and Hernandez."

The Por Esto! Report about Hernandez was expanded upon by Giordano and
published in the Boston Phoenix of Massachusetts, for which he has written
in Mexico. But Giordano sent a memorandum of complaint to the leadership of
the New York Times to denounce the threats of Dillon that sought to protect
Hernandez from the accusations of drug trafficking. Still, he did not
receive any response.

In the theme of drug trafficking, Dillon obtained, together with Craig
Pyes, the Pulitzer in journalism for his reports on corruption in high
Mexican political spheres. Above all, for a text published on the first
page of the New York Times on February 23, 1997, against Manlio Fabio
Beltrones and Jorge Carrillo Olea, identifying them as protectors of drug
traffickers. Beltrones filed a legal complaint against the correspondent
and the newspaper and provoked an investigation by the Attorney General who
ruled that there was no evidence that linked Beltrones with the narco.
Still, Dillon never presented the documents attributed to the DEA that he
included in his investigation.

Giordano documented a little-known story about drug trafficking in the
Caribbean: How the New York Times and Dillon broke the first pressures
against Mario Villanueva in December of 1998 to accuse him of being a drug
trafficker. That served as the opening salvo in the investigation by the
Attorney General, launched a few days later, against the then-governor of
Quintana Roo.

The strange part of the matter was that the texts of Dillon never included
the confirmed story about the origin of Villanueva's disgrace: That it had
been his conflict with Banamex owner Roberto Hernandez over real estate.

Hernandez was, then and now, the main scuba-diving companion of President
Zedillo. And Villanueva has declared that he lost the support of President
Zedillo when he opposed business plans of his brother Rodolfo Zedillo Ponce
de Leon in Cancun.

In the coverage of information about drug trafficking in the Carribean,
Dillon evaded all reference to Hernandez and Banamex, even when Hernandez
was host on the Peninsula of a meeting between Zedillo and President
Clinton in February 1999, in spite of the fact that the New York Times
correspondent knew of that information. Giordano wrote in his text about
Dillon that the NYT correspondent had to confess, after this meeting, that,
yes, he did have information against Hernandez for drug trafficking on his
properties. "I decided," said Dillon in the report by Giordano, "that it
would be a cheap shot."

The mercenary role of Dillon in favor of Hernandez was revealed on February
23 by Cynthia Cotts in her Village Voice column. The report implied an
accusation against Dillon. "In Mexico, untouchables are people who are
protected by the power that they excersize. Such is the case of Sam Dillon,
bureau chief of the New York Times in Mexico, and Roberto Hernandez, owner
of Banamex." The columnist reported that Dillon had facts and evidence that
involved Hernandez in drug trafficking but avoided reporting them.

On Mexican politics, Dillon always accepted the official version of free
elections but neglected the evidences of irregularities. His wife, Julia
Preston, who also worked for the NYT, was Boston Globe correspondent in
Nicaragua and had a tendency that was intentionally anti-Sandinista.
According to the late United States radical Abbie Hoffman, Preston egged-on
foreign correspondents against the Sandinistas in 1985.

The exit of Dillon and Preston from the office of the New York Times in
Mexico marks a political act because it occurs a few weeks before the most
important elections of the country in 71 years of the PRI era.
International press coverage presents a possibility of sensitizing
important sectors of US public opinion in favor of the Mexican political
transition. The new correspondents will arrive very late to open sources
and understand the Mexican reality, something that without a doubt will
benefit the Zedillo government that is very committed to the triumph of
Francisco Labastida.

In the past, the New York Times correspondents in Mexico were irrelevant.
Gay Talese recounts in "The Kingdom and the Power: The History of the New
York Times" how in the 60s the correspondent of the New York daily lived in
Cuernavaca and spent his days at the racetrack.

The exit of Dillon in middle of an important political process is a
humiliating matter for Dillon but also a difficult one for the Times. After
having received a Pulitzer prize in journalism, Dillon appears to have lost
the confidence of his editors and they conceded him "permission" to retire
to write a book.

Very prone to demand explanations, the New York Times owes an explanation
to the Mexican people about the replacement of Dillon and Preston.
According to Giordano, it would be difficult for the Times to fire him
because he belonged to a team that won the Pulitzer. But a few years ago,
the Washington Post fired the journalist Janet Cooke who won a Pulitzer for
a report that turned out to be fiction.

Without a detailed explanation about the exit of Dillon, the reports of the
Times about drug trafficking will lack credibility. And, in the same
manner, the reports that won Dillon the Pulitzer will have lost the
confidence of the readers.