By Maira Magro
"I've brought my rifle, and I’m going to shoot you,” Mayor Percy Fernández of Santa Cruz warned a TV reporter and a cameraman who had insisted on questioning him about his plan to reorganize the city’s public markets, Los Tiempos and El Mundo report.
The Santa Cruz Press Federation said Fernández had attacked press freedom. It reported the threat to the prosecutor’s office and said the mayor should be required to take a mental health exam, Los Tiempos says.
Wednesday's threat isn’t the first time Fernández has caused controversy for his remarks about media workers in Bolivia's largest city: In September, he said that journalists were “traitors” who should “die.”
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
