Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui on putting people at the center of journalism
Talking about the future of journalism makes little sense without addressing the converging crises of the rise of authoritarianism, the expansion of AI and climate change — forces that are driving a civilizational shift for humanity.
That was how Mexican journalism pioneer Carmen Aristegui opened her keynote address at the 19th Ibero-American Journalism Colloquium, held at the University of Texas at Austin on Sept. 19.
These crises are defining for humanity, and journalism should be responding to them, Aristegui said in a conversation with Rosental Calmon Alves, founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, which organized the colloquium.
“Journalism needs to broaden its spaces,” she said. “Broaden the spaces for discussion, broaden the spaces for political and social debate around all of these issues so that people can make decisions.”
Putting the human at the center
Aristegui also said the world order established after World War II is being reshaped. Populist leaders are coming to power through democratic means and, once there, seeking to weaken institutions that serve as checks and balances, from the judicial and legislative branches to the news media. Aristegui described this as a script that is being repeated.
“Within this script, within these political patterns that are unfortunately prevailing, a fundamental factor is the critics, the news media, independent journalists, those of us who are dedicated to informing, who are dedicated to making sure society has that fundamental value that is information,” Aristegui said. “The script says they have to be attacked.”
And under that script, she added, the news media have been identified as enemies whose reputations must be destroyed.
In her home country, she said, those efforts to silence journalists have reached the extreme of murder. Mexico tops the list of the most dangerous countries in which to practice journalism.
And on top of that, she said, there’s AI, which is driving a global paradigm shift. She pointed to discussions at the International Symposium on Journalism — another conference organized by the Knight Center that preceded the colloquium — where AI experts weighed the technology’s benefits against its “dark” sides, which could put humanity itself at risk.
“All of these things lead us, my dear Rosental, to our own question: What the heck are we doing here?” Aristegui said. “What’s our role? What’s the role of journalists?”
For Aristegui, the answer is to center journalism on the human being.
Yes, journalists must continue to report on the day-to-day — such as who’s leading Brazil’s elections or what the candidates are saying. But they must also, she said, address how social media and the manipulation of technology are affecting democracies.
“Everything that encompasses the human condition has to be at the center, as the main point around which everything else revolves,” she said.
Aristegui confronts presidential power
Aristegui also answered questions about censorship and press freedom, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s controversial morning news conferences and the weakening of institutions in her country.
Confrontations with presidents have been a constant throughout her career.
Aristegui explained how Aristegui Noticias was born out of efforts to silence her by former presidents Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. In 2011, a public question from Aristegui about an alleged alcohol problem involving Calderón prompted a series of efforts to pressure her into issuing a public apology, which she refused to do.
But it was the 2014 investigation known as “The White House of Peña Nieto” that set off the conflict that ended with Aristegui’s departure and that of her team from her former employer, MVS Radio. Aristegui took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, seeking to shield editorial independence from the interests of media owners.
More recently, in July 2026, President Claudia Sheinbaum mentioned Aristegui during one of her morning news conferences, known as “mañaneras,” and said she would never try to censor her as previous presidents had. Aristegui, in a public response to the president, said freedom of expression was a right, not a permission granted by a government official.
In her conversation with Alves, Aristegui discussed the role of the mañaneras, a communications tool created by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Aristegui described them as a system for imposing a public narrative.
“It’s not that original because it’s part of the same script,” she said. “That mañanera and that way political leaders take the microphone and impose the agenda every day […] uses the entire communications ecosystem paid for with public money — radio, television, social media. There’s a lot of public money being used to replicate, amplify and endlessly reproduce the message that the media themselves cannot avoid.”
Alves asked Aristegui about the closure of Mexico’s National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection, an independent body that guaranteed access to public information and for years served as a model for the region. For Aristegui, this is perhaps the clearest example and “sadly, one of Mexico’s greatest losses, but not the only one.” Aristegui also pointed to changes affecting the National Electoral Institute and the judicial system.
“We are in a country where, as in others, the script is being carried out,” Aristegui said. “That script says we have to dismantle democratic institutions to create a totalitarian regime, a regime in which our freedoms are shrinking. And that is why the role of critics and journalists has to be stronger than ever, because we need checks and balances when institutions have been dismantled.”