As a result of their ineffective prosecution of crimes against journalists and attempts at influencing news coverage, state authorities in Mexico have become a "major obstacle" to press freedom in the country, according to a report from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the International Press Institute (IPI).
Mexican journalist Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism this year, the Pulitzer Prize board announced on Monday.
A new report found that a majority of the 32 state governments in Mexico hides information regarding their official advertising expenses in media outlets and that none of them has specific rules on how they allocate their publicity budgets. "This discretionary distribution of advertising funds weakens informative pluralism and increases suspicions of political favoritism," said the organization Fundar, which put together the second edition of the report Access to Official Advertising Funds Index along with the Mexican chapter of the press freedom organization Article 19.
A report from the Media Agreement Observatory has revealed that Mexican media has notably reduced its coverage of organized crime since the inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto as president in December.
A Mexican court sentenced the confessed killer of journalist Regina Martínez Pérez to 38 years and two months in prison, reported the newspaper El Universal. The court also ordered Jorge Antonio Hernández "El Silva" to pay $8,000 in reparations for the murder and aggrevated robbery, the newspaper added.
A Mexican Facebook and Twitter user, who reported on violence and attacks in the north of Mexico, announced on Sunday the definitive closing of the account Valor por Tamaulipas in the coming nine days, reported Proceso.
Violence continues in Mexico but the new administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto is making an all-too-obvious push to disassociate the country’s image from drugs, cartels and bloodshed, according to three leading U.S. correspondents based in Mexico during an April 4 panel hosted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
On April 2, the governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, received an award from the Mexican Association of Newspaper Editors (AME in Spanish) for his role in "guaranteeing freedom of expression."
In a front-page editorial on April 2, the Mexican newspaper El Imparcial asked the new president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, not to forget the case of Alfredo Jiménez Mota, a journalist who covered the police beat in the northern state of Sonora and disappeared eight years ago.
In June 2012, journalist Ana Lilia Pérez joined the ranks of at least 15 other Mexican journalists living in exile after receiving threats, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The founder of Blog del Narco is a young woman living in northern Mexico, revealed by the British newspaper The Guardian and the website Texas Observer in the first interview with the administrator of the hugely popular blog.
After citing security concerns and work conflicts, the post went on to say, “It was necessary at this time to pause and re-think our activities and objectives.” The post declared that the accounts would eventually re-open, reported Animal Político.