Mexico offers bodyguards and bulletproof vests to vulnerable journalists. It hasn’t been enough.

Date: January 27, 2022

Source: The Washington Post

MEXICO CITY — Veteran news reporter María de Lourdes Maldonado López knew there were people who wanted her dead, so she applied for the only protection she knew: an unusual Mexican government program that promised to defend vulnerable journalists with state-funded bodyguards, bulletproof vests and other protection.

Maldonado López seemed certain to qualify. She was a well-known broadcast journalist in Tijuana, where for years she had received threats, including two attacks on her car and multiple promises to hunt her down.

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Anxiety and anger grip press corps in Mexico after spate of murders

Date: January 27, 2022

Source: CNN

Journalists in Mexico are fed up.

In a country whose climate is infamous for being exceedingly hostile toward journalists, a spate of murders has disillusioned an already cynical press corps, prompting journalists to publicly speak out about the dangers they face on the job. Across the country, journalists and human rights advocates demonstrated on Tuesday night in favor of press freedom. They held signs that read “journalism at risk” and paid tribute to their fallen colleagues — those who have lost their lives for simply reporting the news.

Just this month, three reporters have been killed in the Latin American country. Journalist Lourdes Maldonado López, who told Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2019 that she feared for her life, was shot to death inside her car on Sunday; photojournalist Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel was shot in the head outside his home on January 17; and Jose Luis Gamboa, the founder and editor two news websites, was killed on January 10.

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Journalists throughout Mexico say enough to killings and crimes against press

MEXICO CITY — Journalists across Mexico took to the streets Tuesday to condemn the killings of colleagues and demand that authorities to do more to protect news gatherers in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press.

Date: Jan. 25th, 2022

Source: LA Times

Protesters in more than three dozen Mexican cities hoisted images of slain journalists and chanted, “You are not alone!” and “Justice!” in coordinated national actions under the heading “Journalism at Risk.” Triggering the denunciations were the slayings of two journalists within a week this month in the northern border city of Tijuana, long a bastion of organized crime, corruption and violence against the press.

Several journalists from Tijuana addressed protesters gathered outside the Interior Ministry in downtown Mexico City using a telephone and loudspeakers. “We are indignant, we are angry, and we are frightened,” said Inés García, co-founder of the Punto Norte news outlet in Tijuana. “We want and demand that we have guarantees to practice journalism. … We fear for our lives, we fear that another of our colleagues will be attacked.”

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How Mexican journalists are reporting in secret on drug cartels

5/5/2016 The Guardian 

How is it possible to report in a country regarded as one of the most dangerous places for a journalist to operate? Answer: do it secretly; do it online; and do it remotely.

According to a Christian Science Monitor article, a Mexican reporter called AJ Espinoza worked out this safe way of working some two years ago.

He teamed up with a US-based reporter in order to write stories he thinks fellow Mexicans should read. But they appear in a US-based outlet rather than his local newspaper.

In that way, he can safely report on the activities of the drug cartels that plague the Mexico-US border region where he operates. Espinoza is quoted as saying: “No one else needs to know that I’m doing this.”

He formed a partnership with Ildefonso Ortiz, a reporter for Breitbart along the Texas-Mexico border, who says that people who don’t live in the region find it “hard to grasp that in cities like Matamoros or Reynosa, organised crime has complete control [over the media]”.

Celeste González de Bustamante, an associate professor at Arizona university who studies the effects of violence on journalism, says:

“Newsrooms started waiting for the green light to publish. But the green or red light wasn’t coming from the owner of the paper or managers, but from members of organised crime.” Editors “have to answer to two bosses: the publishers and the cartels.”

Attacks on journalist surge in Mexico: rights group

3/17/2016 Yahoo News

Mexico City (AFP) – Attacks against journalists increased by nearly 22 percent in Mexico last year, with eight media workers killed and nearly 400 assaulted, a press rights group said Thursday.

The report by Article 19 said that the organization has observed a “deterioration of freedom of speech” since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012.

The number of attacks has risen over the years, from 207 in 2012 to 326 in 2014 and 397 last year, the report said.

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