87 year-old Jacobo Zabludovsky, the Mexican journalist Molotov burned in their song, “Que no te Haga Bobo Jacobo,” died Thursday of a stroke. Mexico’s longest-serving TV anchor, Zabludovsky was hospitalized for dehydration and was initially said to be improving, before he ultimately succumbed to a stroke. Zabludovsky served as host of Televisa’s 24 Horas for nearly three decades, from 1971 to 1998. The network famously has ties to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and Zabludovsky’s noncritical approach to covering the Mexican government made him a controversial figure and, to many, a symbol of government corruption.
He was perhaps most famous for his reporting following the tragic 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre. Instead of talking about the students killed by police and the military, Zabludovsky went the Fox News route and largely ignored it, opening his day’s coverage saying “today was a sunny day” and framing the massacre as a “zafarrancho”.