Team
MOM Team
Salvador Frausto Crotte
Editor and investigative journalist in newspapers, magazines, books and multimedia projects. Author and coordinator of the books "Los doce mexicanos más pobres" and "El vocero de Dios"; coauthor of the books "Los amos de México" and "Crónicas de otro planeta", among others. He coordinated the area of investigative journalism and the weekly journal Domingo, part of El Universal, which received more than 24 national and international journalism awards. He has been also team leader in Grupo Editorial Expansión, Gatopardo, Cambio México and El Financiero. Founder of the Ibero-American journalists’ network Cuadernos Doble Raya. Currently he is working as a consultant for journalistic projects.
Alice Pipitone
Graduated as a historian from the University of Bologna (Italy) with a master’s degree in Journalism from Universidad del Rosario/Publicaciones Semana (Bogotá, Colombia). Independent journalist from Washington D.C for Newsweek in Spanish and for the magazine Cambio. Investigative journalist in Colombia for the magazine Revista Dinero (Publicaciones Semana) and collaborator for the web portal VerdadAbierta.com. In Mexico she works as radio reporter for Enfoque Noticias and has collaborated with Radio Fórmula and Esquire Latinoamérica.
Óscar Balderas
Independent journalist. His investigations and chronicles have been translated in four languages and have been published in more than 50 national and international media. Finalist for the Gabriel García Márquez Award for Journalism and winner of the awards Periodismo Judicial and Premio Género y Justicia. Coauthor of the books Tú y yo coincidimos en la noche terrible and Los 12 mexicanos más pobres. Member of the journalists’ networks Cuadernos Doble Raya and Ojos de Perro contra la Impunidad.
María Paula Laguna
Colombian journalist with a residence in Mexico. Worked as a reporter and editor for the magazines Semana and Arcadia in Bogotá. As a fellow in the program Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, her multimedia project was a finalist for the 2017 Excellence in Journalism contest of the Inter American Press Association. María Paula holds a bachelor’s degree in social communication from the Javeriana University in Bogotá and a master’s degree in international media from Deutsche Welle and the University of Bonn, Germany.
Sofía Isabel Benedicto
Coursing the last trimester in social communication at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, specializing in journalism, networks and social movements. Currently Sofia collaborates in independent digital media related to the electoral campaigns in Mexico. Research assistant at the Ibero-American journalists’ network Cuadernos Doble Raya.
Nube Álvarez, MOM Project Manager Mexico (RSF)
Nube Álvarez is project manager for the Reporters without Borders project Media Ownership Monitor in Mexico. She is a media researcher, freelance journalists and news coordinator with a focus on press freedom and media development. Ms. Álvarez has experience training up-and-coming journalists in programs that boost media skills. In her M.A International Media Studies’ thesis, Ms. Álvarez examined the experiences of Mexican journalists in exile and displacement with the aim to reflect on the phenomena of violence against press and its implications in press freedom.
Lisa-Maria Kretschmer, MOM Project Coordinator (RSF)
Coordinator and Head of Research for the Media Ownership Monitoring Project. She is responsible for project implementation in the Philippines. She previously worked in the fields of human rights and disaster resilience for GIZ and a German Member of Parliament, among others. In 2011 she assisted the Munich Ludwig-Maximilians University in an international research project about the role of the media in conflict situations. She draws on this experience and on her previous for-profit and not-for-profit positions in communications agencies and departments to drive public awareness of human rights issues. She studied political communication, journalism and economics in Germany (LMU Munich, FU Berlin), the Netherlands, Denmark and Israel.
Olaf Steenfadt, MOM Global Project Director (RSF)
Heads the "Media Ownership Monitor" project and the "Journalism Trust Initiative" at the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF. For many years, he has been engaged as a consultant and coach in media development cooperation. Mandates of international organizations and NGOs lead him primarily to Southeast Europe and the Arab world. He previously worked for national German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF in various roles, including as a radio and TV presenter, investigative reporter, domestic and foreign correspondent, as well as in format development and corporate communication. Olaf is a member of the "High-level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation" of the European Commission and of the "Committee of Experts on Quality of Journalism in the Digital Age" at the Council of Europe. He teaches frequently at universities in Germany and Europe.
Advisory Group
Professor Carlos Bravo Regidor
A historian from the University of Chicago, associate professor and research coordinator of the journalism program at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A.C. (CIDE). Collaborator for several media, such as Letras Libres, Nexos, La Razón, El Universal and Horizontal. His area of specialty is political thought and intellectual history.
Dr. Rodrigo Gómez García
Professor and researcher at the department of Communication Sciences at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. He belongs to a group of researchers in political and institutional communication, where he coordinates the observatory of industries, policies and cultural consumption. Among his areas of research are the concentration and diversity of the communication media in Mexico, as well as the democratization of the media.
Patricia de Obeso
She has worked for the organization Consejo Cívico de Instituciones de Nuevo León, which focuses on analyzing violence and crime prevention. Currently she is Mexico's Coordinator of the Institute of Economics and Peace, which yearly publishes the Global Peace Index, measuring peacefulness in 162 countries and calculating the global cost of violence.
Professor Gabriel Sosa Plata
He has bachelor’s and master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the Autonomous National University of Mexico. He has won national awards for investigation and has participated with essays in more than 15 collective books. Columnist in several digital portals and magazines. He has also been assistant director of information at Radio Educación, as well as member of the programming board at Radio Ciudadana owned by the Mexican Radio Institute. Defender of the interests of the audience and assessor in communication media and telecommunications at the Government Commission of the Chamber of Deputies (2009-2011).
Homero Campa
He holds bachelor’s degree in journalism and collective communication from the Autonomous National University of Mexico and master’s degree in journalism and political affairs from CIDE. He has won journalism prizes such as Walter Reuter Award. Author of the book “La Conexión México-La Habana- Washington”. Among his research interests are the tendencies in journalism, the situation with the journalists in Mexico and the mechanisms for protecting human rights defenders and journalists.
Ricardo González Bernal
Coordinator of the Global Program of Protection of journalists in the international organization “Articulo 19”. This organization works for a world where we could all freely exercise the right to freedom of expression. From 2005 to 2007 he had worked as assistant director of investigation and analysis at the Ministry of Interior.
Cencos
The National Center for Social Communication (Cencos), has been working for more than 50 years to strengthen, promote and disseminate human rights, the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, as well as the rules and legal frameworks necessary for its exercise. It also seeks to strengthen strategic communication capabilities of groups and people in vulnerable situations, and facilitate their access to the media and communication tools.
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (Reporter Sans Frontières, RSF) was founded in Montpellier (France) in 1985 by four journalists. It is is registered in France as a non-profit organization and has consultant status at the United Nations and UNESCO. RSF advocates for media freedom, supports independent media and protects endangered journalists worldwide. Its missions are
- To continuously monitor attacks on freedom of information worldwide.
- To denounce any such attacks in the media.
- To act in cooperation with governments to fight censorship and laws aimed at restricting freedom of information.
- To morally and financially assist persecuted journalists, as well as their families.
- To offer material assistance to war correspondents in order to enhance their safety.
Since 1994, the German section is active in Berlin. Although this section works closely with the International Secretariat in Paris to research and evaluate media freedom worldwide, it is organizationally and financially independent. In that role, it has applied for a grant at the federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development – in order to finance the Media Ownership Monitor project.
Global Media Registry
The Global Media Registry (GMR) collects, compiles and provides – either publicly available or self-reported – datasets and contextual information on media outlets around the world.
In doing so, the objective is to enhance transparency, accountability and responsibility in the information space. Thus, the GMR facilitates better choices and decision making, both algorithmic and human, of all stakeholders. These may include every citizen and consumer, regulators and donors, as well as the private sector – for example advertisers and intermediaries (a. k. a. platforms and distributors).
By providing this public service as a social enterprise, the Global Media Registry contributes to the advancement of the freedoms of information and expression at large.
It was founded as a spin-off from the Media Ownership Monitor project, which it now operates as a non-for-profit LLC registered under German law.