Summer Break
As Matea Gold reports, "Fox News Channel is going off the air in Mexico in advance of Sunday's presidential election to steer clear of that country's restrictions on campaign ads and public surveys, cable channel executives said Wednesday."
In Mexico, it's against the law to disseminate opinion polls or campaign commercials in the run-up to an election, so the channel went off the air today and will remain that way until Sunday.
"I just don't think we had much choice," Janet Alshouse, senior vice president of international distribution for Fox News, told Gold. "We can't restrict our coverage."
CNN International and CNN en Espanol plan will remain on the air, however.
Here's Gold's breakdown: "Mexican law prohibits the broadcast or publication of opinion surveys in the eight days leading up to an election, as well as any campaign activities in the three days before the vote. In a memo to Fox News, government officials said that electoral law also prohibited the discussion of citizens' political preferences and analysis of candidates' weaknesses on the air in the days before the election."
It's hard to say what's going on here – wouldn't CNN be engaging in the same type of coverage as Fox News? Why is it not an issue for them?
In any event, I can see the appeal of keeping opinion surveys and campaign ads off the air in the run-up to the election, and even of restricting "analysis of candidates' weaknesses," which on cable news can turn ugly. But it's hard to get behind a law that forces a news outlet to either alter the nature of its coverage or simply go off the air.