International organizations expressed concern about the Mexican journalist and her son who went missing on Friday, June 8, in the city of Saltillo, in northern Mexico, and demanded that authorities find the missing journalist.
Another journalist was killed in Veracruz, México; his body was found inside of plastic bags in the early morning of Thursday, June 14, in the city of Xalapa, reported the Associated Process and the weekly Proceso. The search started the night before after the journalist was kidnapped while leaving his office, according to Reuters. It is believed that the journalist was probably a victim of organized crime, reported the newspaper El Economista.
Mexican state legislators approved a constitutional reform that will allow federal authorities to investigate crimes against journalists, reported the newspaper La Jornada on Thursday, June 7. In March, the Senate approved a proposal to make crimes against journalists federal jurisdiction, which before were dealt with locally. But, because this was a constitutional reform, the new measure also required the approval of the majority of the 31 Mexican state legislators.
A Mexican police reporter and her son went missing the early morning of June 8, reported the newspaper Milenio.
The British newspaper The Guardian said it had documents that proved that a Mexican presidential candidate bought favorable coverage on the most important TV station in the country, Televisa.
Political columnist Katia D’Artigues of the Mexican newspaper El Universal said that she and her son received many death threats via Twitter warning her to stop criticizing presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in Spanish), reported the Program for Freedom of Expression of the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET in Spanish).
Six years after U.S. Indymedia cameraman Brad Will was shot to death in Oaxaca, Mexico, Mexican authorities have announced the arrest of a former public education employee, Lenin Osorio Ortega, charged with killing Will, reported Milenio. Still, media monitoring groups like Reporters Without Borders remain suspicious about who really killed Will, who was shot while covering a Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) protest on Oct. 27, 2006.
In the Mexican state of Veracruz, one of the 10 most-dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, fear is surging that more journalists are going to be killed. According to the digital newspaper El Arsenal, a new list is circulating with the names of journalists slated to be killed in coming days, and the warning comes from an official in the state prosecutor's office.
Succumbing to pressure from the Mexican student movement “Yo Soy 132,”, or "I am 132," the president of the TV station Televisa, Emilio Azcárraga, agreed to nationally broadcast the next presidential debate, reported Noticias MVS. Then, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, president of the second largest TV station, TV Azteca, announced that it, too, would nationally televise the debate, according to El Informador.
Heading towards the Mexican presidential elections on July 1, voting surveys are done on Facebook; candidates have cell phone 'apps' and YouTube channels, and citizen journalists are the protagonists of new digital media that have refreshed electoral coverage to meet the demands of a younger and more informed public. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas interviewed the directors of Mexican digital and independent media about this tendency.
Miguel Ángel López Solana, son of the Mexican columnist brutally killed in the state of Veracruz along with his family in June 2011, described to participants of the 10th annual Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas the ordeals he faced to flee Mexico because of fear that his life was in jeopardy.
The Mexican newspaper Reforma said that the house of editor Lázaro Ríos Cavazos was raided on the night of Tuesday, May 22, according to the Wednesday's newspaper edition.