Just two days after the release of a report on the state of press freedom in Mexico that denounced increasing police and military aggression against reporters, a photographer for the Televisa station was arrested and beaten by security agents in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Friday, March 4, reported local press.
The documentary “Presumed Guilty,” about judicial mistakes and corruption in Mexico, may become a victim of the system it criticizes, La Crónica de Hoy reports. Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction after a witness in a trial, which led to the ultimately overturned conviction of Antonio Zuniga for murder, said he never gave permission to be filmed, the Los Angeles Times explains.
At least 139 journalists and 21 media outlets in Mexico suffered violence related to their work in 2010, a year in which violence against them media grew and drug traffickers were not the only perpetrators, says the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) in its annual report.
El Imparcial newspaper reports that one of its photographers, Julián Ortega, was threatened and assaulted by officers searching for shooters who had killed a pair of police moments earlier.
Attackers fired on a truck carrying an Associated Press correspondent and a publicist for Radio Fórmula in the city of Cuernavaca, a favorite vacation destination for Mexico City residents that has become prime ground for battles between rival drug gangs, El Universal and Radio Fórmula report.
Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, the anchor of a news show on Televisa, was held for eight hours upon his arrival to Cairo, first by a group of civilian “vigilantes” and later by the army, which confiscated his cell phone, El Universal reports.
El Diario de Juárez, a major newspaper in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez – one of the world’s most violent cities – won the 2011 award for journalistic excellence, organized by the Mexico branch of PEN International.
Episodes of press censorship in Latin America are at the highest levels since many countries began to return to democracy 30 years ago, writes Carlos Lauría, senior program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Lauría’s analysis of censorship in the continent was part of the CPJ’s annual report titled Attacks on the Press 2010.
Radio Rama journalist Gildardo Mota was shot in the leg while covering a confrontation between police and professors who were protesting Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s visit to the southern city of Oaxaca, the Associated Press reports.
Award-winning Mexican radio host Carmen Aristegui will be back on the air by Feb. 21, MVS Radio announced, two weeks after having fired the journalist for commenting on allegations that President Felipe Calderón was an alcoholic, the BBC reports.
The controversial decision to sack an award-winning Mexican radio host for commenting on allegations that President Felipe Calderón is an alcoholic has prompted protests and opened a debate on the relationship between concentrated media ownership and politically-motivated censorship.
An armed group attacked the facilities of two media outlets and shot to death a worker on Feb. 9 in the city of Torreón, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, one of the regions most affected by drug trafficking violence in the country, reported the local press.