With six countries listed without a free press, including three countries with some of the highest levels of impunity in the world for press crimes, Latin American freedom of expression is at its lowest levels since 1989.
On Thursday, May 2, the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) published an open letter to United States President Barack Obama urging him to use his visit to Mexico this week to strike a firm commitment to protect freedom of expression and end impunity for press crimes in the troubled country.
The state police of Coahuila, Mexico have begun the search for journalist Gerardo Padilla Blanquet, reported missing on April 30 2013 in Saltillo.
On April 28, 2012, the news spread by word of mouth through a shocked community. Regina Martínez Pérez, correspondent for Proceso magazine, was found dead in her house in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists have launched a new crowd-sourced map to track attacks against journalists, social media users and bloggers who report crime and corruption in Mexico.
Now that they've reached the largest social media audience in Mexico, the next step for the popular news site Animal Político is to diversify their sources of revenue and completely avoid the publicity purchased by the Mexican government, the most important advertiser for news outlets covering politics and general information in the country.
To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the killing of Mexican journalist Regina Martínez, hundreds of journalists in 20 Mexican cities took to the streets on Sunday, April 28 to demand protection for the press and investigations into crimes against journalists. On Storify and Tumblr, journalists published images and text about the unpunished killings and attacks on journalists.
Update 2: Anonymous journalists in Saltillo told the magazine Proceso that a representative from the Coahuila state prosecutor knew in advance where to find the bodies of Martínez and Zamora.
The independent Mexican journalist Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her research on the network of bribery and corruption that was a key part of Wal-Mart de México’s expansion strategy, recounted to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas how she joined the investigation begun by David Barstow of the New York Times into the Mexican operations of the world’s largest supermarket chain.
In an open letter, NGOs have warned the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, of a possible plan to kidnap a journalist in the state of Veracruz. In the letter, the International Press Institute (IPI) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) urged Mexican authorities to investigate the situation and take necessary measures to guarantee the journalist’s safety.
The director and staff of freedom of the press organization Article 19 in Mexico received on April 19 a letter containing threats.
A police reporter in the notoriously dangerous state of Veracruz, Mexico, has been missing for 60 days, denounced Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French).