According to international organizations, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism. Just this year alone Mexico has registered 10 murders, multiple kidnappings and numerous attacks against the media with guns, grenades and bombs. All of these cases have been compiled in a new map of threats to journalism in Mexico, created by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
According to international organizations, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism. Just this year alone Mexico has registered 10 murders, multiple kidnappings and numerous attacks against the media with guns, grenades and bombs. All of these cases have been compiled in a new map of threats to journalism in Mexico, created by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
A prosecutor has opened an investigation into two former congressmen, Francisco Ferney Tapasco and his son Dixon Ferney Tapasco Triviño, for their alleged role in the death of Orlando Sierra, a journalist and editor at La Patria newspaper, EFE and RCN Radio report.
A grenade exploded Saturday, Sept. 25, at the radio station Olimpica Stereo, in the city of Villavicencio. No one was injured, reported the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP).
Marvin del Cid Acevedo, part of the investigative team for the Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, had his home broken into for a second time, and his laptop, where he stores all the documents associated with his journalistic work, was stolen, reported Cerigua.
Gerardo Rodriguez, editor of the Mexican newspaper El Diario de Juarez, spoke with NPR during an interview about violence, impunity, and the editorial the newspaper published Sunday, Sept. 19, asking drug cartels for a truce.
Forty-five journalists and representatives from media organizations from 20 countries gathered Sept. 17-18, 2010, in Austin, Texas, for the 8th Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas. The Forum is organized by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and the Open Society Foundations' programs for Latin America and the media.
Thieves made off with computers and several USB drives from the house of Ignacio Gómez, a TV news host and the president of the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP). For the journalist, one of the targets of illegal spying by the Administrative Department of Security (Colombia’s intelligence agency – DAS), this is the fifth robbery in seven years.
Media directors and journalists say they are skeptical of the the government’s newly announced protective measures against attacks from organized crime, EFE reports.
In a meeting with representatives of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico's President Felipe Calderón vowed to put in place by October a plan to protect journalists, similar to one in Colombia, and to launch legal reforms that would make killings of journalists a federal crime, reported the Associated Press and IAPA.
"In no way should anyone promote a truce or negotiate with criminals who are precisely the ones causing anxiety for the public, kidnapping, extorting and killing." With these words, Alejandro Poire, security spokesman for President Felipe Calderon, criticized the editorial in El Diario de Juárez in which the newspaper asked for a truce with organized crime after the killing of one of its photographers, reported the Associated Press and BBC.
After one of its photographers was killed by gunmen Thursday, Sept. 16, the Mexican newspaper Diario de Juárez, in an unprecedented move, published an extensive editorial on Sunday, Sept. 19, asking for a truce with drug cartels that would end the violence and, above all, stop the attacks against journalists in Mexico, reported CNN and the Associated Press. Newspaper editors also clarified that the call for peace does not mean the newspaper is giving up its journalistic work.