The legislature for the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, which recently has become one of the most violent regions in the country because of drug trafficking, has passed a law protecting journalistic secrets, the first such legislation in Mexico, reported El Diario de Ciudad Juárez.
A Mexican journalist was seriously injured in the head and received a 12 cm.-long cut in the face on Sunday, June 19, in the southern state of Chiapas, reported El Economista. Another reporter was mentioned as a possible suspect responsible for the attack.
Amidst the new wave of violence against the Mexican press, including the killing of two journalists in two weeks, the discovery of a journalist's body in a secret grave, and the kidnapping of a reporter, journalists and press freedom organizations are doubting whether freedom of expression truly exists in Mexico.
Two Mexican journalists who risk their lives covering the illegal drug trade along the U.S.-Mexico border will receive the 2011 Knight International Journalism Award, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) announced June 22.
Journalist Miguel Ángel López Velasco, a security and drug trafficking expert, was killed in his home with his wife and son in the eastern port city of Veracruz, The Associated Press reports. López is the second Mexican journalist killed in less than a week, in the midst of unrelenting attacks against the press, which also includes the kidnapping of another reporter 11 days ago.
Norte newspaper, based in the U.S.-Mexico border city of Cuidad Juárez, denounced a series of incidents against its reporters by federal police forces tasked with fighting organized crime and drug trafficking, the National Center for Social Communication (CENCOS in Spanish) reports. The paper is renowned for continuing to cover drug trafficking issues in Mexico’s deadliest city.
In spite of promises from media outlets and the Mexican authorities to improve protection for journalists exposed to drug trafficking violence, attacks against the press are unceasing, prompting media workers to take to the streets to pressure the government to end the violence.
Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE in Spanish) is considering a bill that would regulate the right of reply during the election campaign period that would effectively require the media to publish for free all of the responses of political parties and candidates who feel aggrieved by a news article, according to El Universal.
With the Mexican press still reeling from the recent disappearance of one journalist and the appearance in a hidden grave of the body of another journalist, now local media are reporting the June 14 killing of reporter Pablo Ruelas Barraza in Huatabampo, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.
U.S. newspapers should do a much better job covering drug trafficking in their own cities, charged a Mexican editor who argues the drug cartels love nothing better than to limit coverage of their deadly activities.
The wave of violence against journalists in Mexico appears to have no end. Even as Mexican media outlets on June 9 reported the kidnapping of journalist Marco Antonio López Ortiz, information chief for the newspaper Novedades Acapulco in the state of Veracruz, journalists remained on alert because of the beating journalist Carlos de Jesús Rodríguez, director of the news site Gobernantes.com, suffered while in jail.
A group of demonstrators threatened and beat three Mexican journalists from the newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca after invading the newspaper's offices in the city of Oaxaca, in Southeastern Mexico, and painting the newspaper's facade with anti-press slogans, reported the National Center of Social Communication (CENCOS).