Where Covering a Wedding Can Bring Death Threats
By TINA ROSENBERG
New York Times
The north of Mexico is under siege. Gang wars for control of the drug market and cocaine routes to the United States took at least 2,000 lives in Mexico last year, most of them in border states. Serious journalism is also a victim.
Working as a reporter has become a very dangerous job in Mexico. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, seven Mexican reporters were killed last year, their work the confirmed or suspected reason. This count moves Mexico past Colombia — a country where journalists vanish with terrifying regularity.
Mexico’s count is still much lower than Iraq’s record of 39 murders in 2006. But it is high enough to accomplish what the traffickers want. Widespread intimidation has brought coverage of drug trafficking virtually to a halt.
Among the most prominent dead are Roberto Javier Mora García, the highly respected editor of El Mañana in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, who was stabbed to death in March 2004. Alfredo Jiménez Mota, the trafficking expert at El Imparciál in Hermosillo, Sonora, has been missing since April 2005. Last year, Enrique Perea Quintanilla, editor of the Chihuahua magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad, which reported on unsolved crimes, was killed.
At respected newspapers across the north, even innocuous decisions — publishing photos of traffickers at a wedding, for example — can bring death threats. Reporters have been kidnapped briefly by drug gangs as a warning. The drug cartels pay off other reporters, who warn colleagues not to touch certain subjects or print certain names or pictures.
Newspapers, many of which depend heavily on government advertising, also face financial pressure from local officials and business leaders to tamp down the reporting. Some officials are on the take; others simply do not want bad news to scare away business and tourism. Northern Mexico is rife with violence, fear and corruption — except in its newspapers. “Before, we focused on writing good stories that went beyond official statements on organized crime and drug trafficking,” said the editor of one northern paper. “Now we are worried about taking care of ourselves.”
Shortly after Mr. Jiménez Mota disappeared, El Imparciál announced that conditions did not permit investigations into drug trafficking, and it would no longer do them. Nor would papers owned by the same family in Tijuana and Mexicali. El Mañana stopped investigating organized crime after Mr. Mora Garciá’s death. Then last February, gunmen broke into the newspaper, firing shots and throwing a grenade, seriously wounding one reporter. The shooting followed a high-profile international conference on journalism in Nuevo Laredo. After the attack, the paper announced that it was no longer going to publish anything about drug trafficking.
(The rest is here.)
New York Times
The north of Mexico is under siege. Gang wars for control of the drug market and cocaine routes to the United States took at least 2,000 lives in Mexico last year, most of them in border states. Serious journalism is also a victim.
Working as a reporter has become a very dangerous job in Mexico. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, seven Mexican reporters were killed last year, their work the confirmed or suspected reason. This count moves Mexico past Colombia — a country where journalists vanish with terrifying regularity.
Mexico’s count is still much lower than Iraq’s record of 39 murders in 2006. But it is high enough to accomplish what the traffickers want. Widespread intimidation has brought coverage of drug trafficking virtually to a halt.
Among the most prominent dead are Roberto Javier Mora García, the highly respected editor of El Mañana in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, who was stabbed to death in March 2004. Alfredo Jiménez Mota, the trafficking expert at El Imparciál in Hermosillo, Sonora, has been missing since April 2005. Last year, Enrique Perea Quintanilla, editor of the Chihuahua magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad, which reported on unsolved crimes, was killed.
At respected newspapers across the north, even innocuous decisions — publishing photos of traffickers at a wedding, for example — can bring death threats. Reporters have been kidnapped briefly by drug gangs as a warning. The drug cartels pay off other reporters, who warn colleagues not to touch certain subjects or print certain names or pictures.
Newspapers, many of which depend heavily on government advertising, also face financial pressure from local officials and business leaders to tamp down the reporting. Some officials are on the take; others simply do not want bad news to scare away business and tourism. Northern Mexico is rife with violence, fear and corruption — except in its newspapers. “Before, we focused on writing good stories that went beyond official statements on organized crime and drug trafficking,” said the editor of one northern paper. “Now we are worried about taking care of ourselves.”
Shortly after Mr. Jiménez Mota disappeared, El Imparciál announced that conditions did not permit investigations into drug trafficking, and it would no longer do them. Nor would papers owned by the same family in Tijuana and Mexicali. El Mañana stopped investigating organized crime after Mr. Mora Garciá’s death. Then last February, gunmen broke into the newspaper, firing shots and throwing a grenade, seriously wounding one reporter. The shooting followed a high-profile international conference on journalism in Nuevo Laredo. After the attack, the paper announced that it was no longer going to publish anything about drug trafficking.
(The rest is here.)
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