Nearly 70 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000 and the the Mexican government is “complicit” in the crimes against media workers, according to a new report by PEN Canada and the International Human Rights Program (IHRP) at the University of Toronto, the Toronto Star reports.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual Impunity Index, which ranks three Latin American countries among those where killers of journalist regularly escape justice, The Associated Press reports.
The Mexican police found the body of journalist Noel López Olguín in a clandestine grave in Chinameca, Veracruz, The Associated Press and Milenio report. The journalist disappeared March 8, presumably kidnapped by drug traffickers.
A grenade was launched against the offices of the newspaper Vanguardia, in Saltillo, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. No one was injured, but the newspaper suffered material damages, according to CNN México.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) is urging Mexican President Felipe Calderón to renew investigative efforts into the 2008 killing of journalist Armando Rodríguez, IAPA said in a press release May 26.
Alleged members of Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s biggest criminal organizations, were arrested while posting a banner threatening the press in the western Guatemalan city of Quetzaltenango, Observador Global reports.
An unidentified cameraman for a local broadcaster in the northern Mexican state of Durango was filming a May 23 car accident when he was shot three times by gunmen who attacked police responding to the incident, Milenio reports.
The Mexican authorities have released journalist Jesús Lemus Barajas, the founder of El Tiempo newspaper, who had been held for three years on charges of having ties to the drug trafficking cartels he was investigating for the paper, EFE reports.
Multivisión (MVS), the same Mexican broadcaster that fired a journalist in February 2011 for commenting on opposition allegations that President Felipe Calderón was an alcoholic, has created an ombudsman position at the station, El Informador reports.
After a workshop on teaching border reporting held April 29-May 1 at the University of Arizona, journalism educators from nine U.S. colleges have joined forces to establish the Border Journalism Network/La Red de Periodismo de la Frontera, according to a University of Arizona statement.
With the Committee to Protect Journalists reporting 861 journalists killed in the line of duty since 1992, and another 145 in prison currently, YouTube has launched a journalist memorial video channel, according to ReadWriteWeb.
On May 3, media workers all over Latin American used World Press Freedom Day to denounce violence against reporters and media outlets and to demand protection, as new reports showed that the region has become one the most dangerous in the world to practice journalism. Press Freedom Day was also marred by the news that two journalists, one in Brazil and another in Peru, were shot to death in separate incidents.