The crying-on-the-inside kind of news

I can’t help thinking of The Simpsons when I read about at this—a pleasing combo of Kent Brockman, Krusty the Clown, and Bumblebee Man. It makes me think of court jesters and maskers using disguises and buffonery to criticize the powerful and get away with it

Foro TV, a product of the Mexican broadcasting conglomerate Televisa, promises to feature some of this country’s leading journalists and commentators, like Hector Aguilar Camin (co-author of “In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution”), Denise Dresser and Leo Zuckerman. But it opens the morning news with Brozo the clown. What does it say about the viewing audience — or Televisa’s perception of us — that we might want our news from a green-haired, red-nosed jokester? Actually, Brozo has quite a history in Mexican current events, and it hasn’t always been a laughing matter. The costumed persona of journalist Victor Trujillo is known for an irreverence that often skewered the mighty and powerful. Embattled politicians all the way up to a president’s wife have chosen him to be the recipient of exclusive interviews or campaign promos. A few years back, Brozo stunned a high-ranking city official who was appearing as a guest on a morning show the clown hosted at the time. Brozo aired a secret videotape showing the man stuffing a briefcase and then his pockets with thousands of dollars in alleged bribe money. The man’s career was toast, and the scandal may have cost his boss, then-Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the presidency in 2006. Brozo left morning television following the death of his wife in 2004 but is returning now to what he says will be a no-holds-barred format

from “Mexican TV launches 24-hour news network — Brozo the clown and all&utm_content=Google+Reader),” by Tracy Wilkinson, La Plaza | Los Angeles Times&utm_content=Google+Reader), 16 Februrary 2010