By Dean Graber
Jorge Ochoa Martinez, editor in chief of El Sol de La Costa newspaper, was assassinated with a gunshot to the face, becoming the third journalist killed in Mexico this year. His body was found in a car parked close to City Hall in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports. Read this report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The police official in charge of the case said there was insufficient evidence to link the killing to organized crime. “As it happens in these cases, no one who witnessed the crime wanted to give their version of the facts,” he said, as quoted by La Jornada.
Ochoa had worked many years in Guerrero’s state capital, Chilpancingo, covering the crime beat for local media, La Jornada adds in a separate story. His body was found late Friday.
The director of Mexico's Foundation for Freedom of Expression was recently quoted by Inter Press Service as predicting that violence would increase, and that 2010 would be “the worst year in the history of Mexican journalism.“ The Inter American Press Association plans to send a delegation to Mexico on Feb. 14 to meet with President Felipe Calderón and other officials to urge more action to halt the violence and impunity.
See the Spanish version of this post, and these other stories in Spanish.
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.
