The Guardian has settled a legal dispute with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa over a series of articles that raised questions about editorial bias in its political coverage.
Televisa complained to the Guardian about several articles published in June last year in the runup to the Mexican election.
The articles, which were based partly on documents provided by a confidential source, raised suspicions that Televisa had sold favourable news coverage to certain political parties and candidates in 2005. Several of the stories raised questions about Televisa’s links with the PRI party candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, who became the 57th president of Mexico on 1 December 2012.
Other broadcasters, including CNN’s Spanish-language news service and influential websites such as animalpolitico.com, followed up on the Guardian articles.
That led Televisa, which is the world’s biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, to publicly deny allegations of editorial bias and question the authenticity of the documents that formed the basis of the Guardian stories.
Both Televisa and the Guardian agreed to settle the dispute with a joint statement published on Tuesday. The media groups said in the statement: “From the outset, the Guardian accepted that it was not possible to verify beyond doubt the authenticity of the documents in question.
“Notwithstanding, the Guardian believed that its articles based on these documents raised a serious matter of legitimate public concern concerning the relationship between Televisa (as Mexico’s leading TV and radio broadcaster) and some of the country’s political candidates. The Guardian published these allegations in good faith based on the material provided by its confidential source.”
The stories will remain online, although a link has been added from each article to the agreed statement. There was no financial settlement between the parties.
However, the statement acknowledges that Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute and the Federal Electoral Court found that allegations of political bias made against Televisa by the country’s Party of the Democratic Revolution, including allegations from the Guardian reports, were unsubstantiated.