"Six journalists have been murdered in Mexico this year, five of them in just over two months, marking one of the deadliest spikes in violence against journalists that CPJ has documented in over a decade.
Despite several organized calls for justice in the Mexican states where the reporters were killed, government authorities have not addressed concerns by local journalists and press freedom groups that journalists are being targeted in connection with their work.
[…]
In response, CPJ has called on the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s office (FGR) to federalize all cases of killed journalists, increase coordination between federal and state authorities, and strengthen protective measures for all journalists under the federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
Federal authorities not only have broad authority, according to Article 21 of the Mexican National Code of Penal Procedures, to take charge of investigations of crimes against journalists when public officials are involved, but they also have shown to be more effective in the past in winning convictions in several high-profile cases of murdered journalists, including the 2017 killings of Miroslava Breach Velducea and Javier Valdez Cárdenas."
