On Thursday Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador administration released a list of names of highly influential Mexican journalists who were greatly benefited by the Government advertising budget during Enrique Peña Nieto's administration, sparking controversy in Mexican journalism.

According to reports by newspaper Reforma, the list mentions 36 reporters who were favored for a total amount of 1.081 million pesos during the last administration, about 52 million dollars.

Joaquin López-Dóriga, whose companies earned 251 million pesos, was the most benefited journalist in the list. This is not surprising, since he was one the major supporters of Peña Nieto's presidential bid in 2012. During Peña Nieto's six-year term, López-Dóriga had meetings on a bi-weekly basis alone with the president to discuss the country's political course.

This close relationship with the highest levels of government cooled down when López-Dóriga was removed from his prime-time evening newscast after a lawsuit presented by María Asunción Aramburuzabala, the wealthiest women in Mexico heiress to the Corona beer fortune, in which she stated that the Mexican journalist blackmailed her in an attempt to boycott a huge real estate development in "Rubén Darío", a major avenue in the posh borough of Polanco in Mexico City.

Another person whose name appeared on the list was Federico Arreola, a controversial figure who is the head of SDP Noticias, a news portal (50% of the company's shares belong to Mexican tv giant Televisa) and received approximately 300 million pesos. During Peña Nieto administration, Arreola built a close relationship with Alejandra Lagunes, who oversaw digital strategy in Los Pinos, the historic presidential residence.

Alejandra Lagunes, former digital director in the Enrique Peña Nieto administration

Alejandra Lagunes, current senator in AMLO's administration, used to say in private meetings that she had a strong control over the portal's content. The official line followed by the news portal remains the same in the current government, with Arreola's editorial style supporting the 4T (that's how people call Mexico's new government due to the claimed transformation AMLO is heading), and harshly criticizing anyone who opposes the government. Arreola's appearance on the list of journalists brought into question his officialism. He accused the people who recommended Andrés Manuel to release the list with the amounts of money that the journalists received of being "parasites".

The controversy may only be the tip of the iceberg of a major scandal: Lagunes allegedly used the government advertising budget to finance a network of websites that followed Peña Nietos's editorial line, that could extend to international franchises such as the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. These two franchises closed their divisions in Mexico without notice, leaving dozens of journalists unemployed and confirming the suspicions of those who pointed out that these media projects were built around the official editorial line.

 The controversy may only be the tip of the iceberg of a major scandal: Lagunes allegedly used the government advertising budget to finance a network of websites that followed Peña Nietos's editorial line, that could extend to international franchises such as the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed 

Lagunes, a former Google director, is also accused by the president's political party of leading the army of social media trolls that mock AMLO's daily press conferences, in an operation that once included Cambridge Analytica, a controversial political consulting firm. In some spheres of the current administration is believed that Lagunes had a partnership with several internet portals, many of which have disappeared or faced layoffs.

Cultura Colectiva is a good example, this website never accounted for the massive layoffs and one complaint for data theft through Facebook accounts. There are also many cases in the list of journalists that own websites with a low rate of users, but good earnings. Some examples: Adela Micha, who received 24 million pesos, Jorge Fernández Menéndez 19 million and Eduardo Ruiz Healy 4 million.

A striking case is that of Pablo Hiriart, CEO of financial newspaper "El Financiero". In his editorials he is always against state-controlled economic policies, he urges authorities to push a free market approach, while he billed the Mexican state for 22 million pesos, according to ComScore.

This scandal opened a new debate between the press and president López Obrador, who on Friday morning denied being responsible for the leak. "Truthfully, we did not disclose the names of those who receive, or received, this support for informative works, this had to do with other [government] agencies" said Andrés Manuel during his morning press conference, although it was unclear to which agency he was referring.

He explained that the information was delivered to the INAI, the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, on a citizen request; however, the INAI denied having spread the information claiming that the request was still being processed.

It is noteworthy that the information only pointed to opinion leaders who are critical of the current government and it did not include the amounts that was invested in other major media outlets such as El Universal, Milenio, Televisa and TV Azteca, which are now close to Lopez Obrador. "Why have the huge amounts of money received by other communication companies not yet been officially made known?" Arreola asked furiously in his editorial, which was published just hours after the list that included him was published.

Daniel Moreno, head of the news website Animal Político, asked "Why did they decided to exclude the mainstream media that received advertising? The journalists and communication companies that are mentioned only represent about 2.5% of the total official publicity during Enrique Peña Nieto administration".

At the press conference on Friday, López Obrador addressed this issue. A news reporter pointed out that the way in which the list was made was discriminatory, since they only showed small media companies owned by journalists, but many others were left out such as newspaper La Jornada, or weekly magazine Proceso, which are close to the current government editorial line. López Obrador replied that the request for information was only directed to the names of the political columnists, but that the request for more extensive information could "be sorted out".