JACOBO ZABLUDOVSKY, who died on July 2nd, aged 87, was for half a century the courteous, unflappable face of Mexican television news. He dressed impeccably, in a suit, black tie and thick spectacles. He had a nose for a good story and such a voice of authority that the phrase “Jacobo said it” was, for many, a mark of truth. His stature was akin to that of Walter Cronkite in the United States. His biography would serve as a history of modern Mexico.
Yet for much of his career he betrayed the trust Mexicans placed in him by broadcasting on behalf of a regime known as the “perfect dictatorship”, which he almost never challenged. His motives for serving his audience and his profession so badly remain a mystery.
It is hard to separate the life of Mr Zabludovsky, the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Poland, from the fortunes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which monopolised power in the second half of the 20th century (and is back in office, now in a more democratic guise, after a 12-year hiatus). He started as a journalist in 1946 when the PRI was flowering. He resigned from the dominant broadcaster, Televisa,...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1HeUmNH
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