Mexico’s President Faces Inquiry for Disclosing Phone Number of Times Journalist

Mexico’s freedom of information institute, a government agency, said Thursday that it would start an investigation into the president’s disclosure on national television of the personal cellphone number of a journalist for The New York Times.

The investigation centers on a decision by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a televised news conference on Thursday that left many aghast in Mexico, one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. At least 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

During the news conference, Mr. López Obrador read aloud from an email from Natalie Kitroeff, The New York Times’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested comment for an article revealing that U.S. law enforcement officials had for years been looking into claims that allies of Mr. López Obrador met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels.

In addition to railing against Ms. Kitroeff and identifying her by name, Mr. López Obrador publicly recited her phone number.

“This is tantamount to doxxing, illegal by Mexican privacy laws and places reporters at risk,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said on X, the social media platform.

Mexico’s National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection, or INAI, said in a statement that its investigation would seek to establish whether Mr. López Obrador had violated Mexican legislation protecting personal data. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of information system, which was created more than two decades ago to make government operations more transparent and curb abuses of power.