In 2008, the multibillionaire purchased a 6.4 percent stake in the New York Times Company. Today, he is the second-largest shareholder in the company, with a 13 percent stake. A natural topic for coverage would be Slim’s telecommunications monopoly that critics charge has free rein to rip off millions of consumers. Paul Roderick Gregory (Real Clear Markets, 3/12/13), a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, noted that Slim controls 75 percent of landlines, 70 percent of broadband access and 70 percent of mobile phones in Mexico. Gregory cited an OECD study (1/30/12) that found that Mexico’s telecom markets are “at the bottom of rankings with other OECD countries in market penetration for fixed, mobile and broadband markets.” The OECD calculated that this virtual monopoly by Slim reduces the living standard of the average Mexican family by over $600 a year and lowers Mexico’s gross domestic product by $32 billion a year. The OECD study did get a passing reference in a 2011 Times article (5/9/11) on Mexico’s attempt to break up Slim’s monopoly—which mentioned Slim’s stake in the Times in the print version, but not the online edition. The article, headlined “Mexico Takes Aim at a Titan in Telecom,” looked at a $1 billion fine that Mexico’s antitrust agency imposed on one of Slim’s subsidiaries. After a paragraph laying out the view of regulator Eduardo Pérez Motta that big companies view Mexico as “a country of favors, friendships and privileges,” the Times neutralized this critique with two paragraphs offering Slim’s point of view: #Propaganda #Corporatism #Neoconservatives #Neoliberals #WageDeflation #IncomeGap #FirstAmendment
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:14:25 +0000
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