Zeta (magazine)

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Zeta cover, October 2005

Zeta is a Mexican magazine published every Thursday in Tijuana by Choix Editores. This publication regularly runs exposés on the local and federal governments as well as on organized crime. As a result, its co-founder and co-director J. Jesús Blancornelas has suffered several attempts of murder including one in 1997. Since then he has received several press awards.

Héctor Félix Miranda, also known as "El Gato Félix", Spanish for Felix the Cat) was murdered on April 20, 1988. For years the magazine has included a page, in every edition, about the murder and how the attacker was an employee of a local millionaire, Jorge Hank Rhon and promises to stop publication when the people who ordered the assassination are convicted. In 2004, the magazine intensified negative publicity towards Hank Rhon, since he was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate to the position of president of the municipality of Tijuana in the 2004 elections in Baja California. However, discontent with the National Action Party (PAN) had a heavier weight on public opinion and Hank Rhon won the election, ending 12 years of PAN government in the municipality.

The publication, however. has also received much criticism because allegedly its editors publish stories based more on rumors and personal feelings than it does on fact. An example can be seen with the 2006 presidential and congressional elections. The magazine, having a personal vendetta against both the PAN and PRI, decided to publish polls supporting the PRD in Baja California. The polls showed the PRD on top in nearly every category, although the election showed that the PRD placed either a distant second or third in every category.