Presentation: The Mexican Press, Revolution to the Present Day

Learn about the role the newspaper press played in Mexican history as a medium of communication between citizens and government officials from the Revolution to the current day.  

Historian Benjamin T. Smith discusses the rise in readership following the Mexican Revolution, gives examples of regional and urban newspapers as important agents of communication and examines the effects of censorship, which has rendered Mexico the most dangerous country in the Western hemisphere for journalists according to a 2022 report from Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).  

Benjamin T. Smith has been writing about the history of Mexico for twenty years. He now specializes on twentieth-century politics, the narcotics trade and crime. But he has also researched and written about indigenous politics, Catholicism, conservatism, newspapers, journalism and censorship. He is the author the 2018 monograph The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940–1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street and the co-editor of the 2018 anthology Journalism, Satire, and Censorship in Mexico. He is a Professor of Latin American History at the University of Warwick and holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University.  

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Benjamin T. Smith – Website | Benjamin T. Smith – X