Last week, a well-known Mexican journalist survived a shooting near his home in the nation’s capital.

In the wake of the incident, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador condemned the attack on Ciro Gómez Leyva and promised a full investigation of the attempted murder.

But then on Tuesday, he alluded to claims that the incident was possibly orchestrated by political opponents in an attempt to undermine his government.

“It was a very poor choice of words from the president,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The attack on Gómez and López Obrador’s comments come after a particularly brutal year for Mexican reporters. Reporters Without Borders recently released a report that found that Mexico alone accounted for 20% of murdered journalists worldwide.