Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández was awarded the 2012 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize given by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Hernández was recognized for her investigative reporting on corruption and the abuse of power in Mexican politics, the association announced on its website on Thursday, March 1.
Guest post by Lise Olsen, Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) board member from 2007-2011, and director of IRE-Mexico from 1996-1998. Twenty leading journalists gathered in Mexico City on Friday, Feb. 18, to exchange information and discuss ways that Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) can continue to help reporters who, under pressure and often at great personal risk, continue to do investigative reporting on U.S.-Mexico border topics such as children victimized by cartel violence, wasteful government spending, political corruption, cartel operations, as well as the huge economic and social costs of our tw
To avoid police aggression, reporters in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, work in groups when covering seizures, arrests and any other crime in this city on the U.S-Mexico border, now considered the second most violent in the world after spending three years in first place. “While one person speaks with officials, others are ready with their cameras to make public any incidents of aggression," explained Alfredo Quijano, editor of the local newspaper Norte, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
Twelve Mexican soccer teams announced that they would prevent reporters from a Mexican sports newspaper from entering their stadiums, reported the magazine Proceso on Saturday, Feb. 18.
The Mexican newspaper El Buen Tono published images and a video from the armed attack the daily suffered more than three months ago, reported the newspaper Milenio on Wednesday, Feb. 15.
The National Chamber of the Radio and TV Industry (CIRT in Spanish), which represents the majority of the radio and TV companies in Mexico, announced that it would appeal to international bodies to denounce the current electoral law, which limits freedom of expression and press freedom, reported the newspaper El Universal.
A Mexican congressman has proposed a law to regulate news coverage about the arrests of organized crime suspects, according to the official state news agency Notimex.
Editors of a magazine in the tourist city of Cancún, Mexico, claimed that their publication was pirated on Feb. 5 in violation of the press law, the rights of the authors, and industrial property laws, according to NotiSureste.
The Juarez Journalists Network reported three city police attacks on reporters in one week in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The latest came the evening of Friday, Feb. 3, when police officers arrested and beat a reporter for El Diario in the newspaper's parking lot, according to Clases de Periodismo and Objetivo Radio.
In two separate events, police attacked journalists in Mexico on Jan. 30. A reporter from the newspaper Noroeste was beaten by judicial police and his camera was taken, reported the same publication. Hours later, the reporter recovered his camera but the officers had deleted the photos he had taken of a skirmish in which three soldiers died in the city of Guasave, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.
A Mexican journalist in Canada is fighting deportation, arguing that returning to Mexico is a death sentence for her and her family, reported CBC News and the Canadian Press. Karla Berenice Garcia Ramirez, who wrote about government corruption, sought asylum in Canada in 2008, but her application was denied in 2010, and in November 2011 a deportation order was issued, the Vancouver Sun explained.
“Mexico is a magical country where there are murders, but no murderers,” said the Mexican poet Homero Aridjis, protesting the rampant impunity in crimes against journalists during an international delegation of writers -- including several Nobel laureates -- organized by the group PEN International, held Sunday, Jan. 29, in Mexico City. The group, including Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and Toni Morrison of the United States, took out a full-page ad in the El Universal newspaper that was signed by 170 writers and celebrated the bravery of journalists in Mexico, according to the Associated Press.