Hugo Olivera Cartas was killed Tuesday morning after being shot three times. The body was found in a pickup truck on a road between the cities of Tepalcatepec and Aguililla in the western state of Michoacán, reports the news agency Quadratín, where the journalist worked. (See this Associated Press article in English.)
The attorney general’s office decided to restructure the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists, which will now focus specifically on crimes against media workers who are attacked for their profession, El Universal and EFE report.
In a letter to the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexican President Felipe Calderón acknowledges a letter CPJ sent him a month ago about the increase in the number of cases of attacks and harassment by security forces against the press. The president said that the complaint was sent to the Attorney General's office, which will offer a response.
Two unidentified, armed assailants went to the home of journalist Juan Francisco Rodríguez Ríos and his wife María Elvira Hernández Galeana, where they ran an Internet cafe in Coyuca de Benítez, in the southern state of Guerrero, and shot them to death, reported El Universal.
Armed men attacked the newspaper Noticias de El Sol de la Laguna in the city of Torreón in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Tuesday, June 22, reports El Nuevo Herald.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission intends to establish an area within the organization dedicated to following step-by-step each case of aggression against journalists, reports the newspaper El Universal.
The Inter American Press Association is kicking off a workshop about how to diminish journalists' risks with the debut of a documentary commemorating the assassination of journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco in Tijuana, Mexico, on June 22, 2004, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Thirteen journalists and photographers from Michoacán state in southwestern Mexico were abducted for three hours during a government media tour to promote tourism in the region, the Associated Press reports.
Mexico’s growing drug violence is a leading topic of news around the world, making headlines this week, for example, not only in English and Spanish, but in Arabic, Japanese, Russian and Urdu.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to President Felipe Calderón to express concern over several attacks and cases of harassment by federal forces against journalists who cover law enforcement.
Mexico's interior minister, Fernando Gómez Mont, demanded the press act responsibly, insisting that the violence prevailing in the country is caused by information spread by the media, El Universal and El Economista report.
Something is wrong with access to information if the body responsible for overseeing the law that protects information access in a country asks the government to clearly state that it doesn't intend to impede transparency. This is what has happened in Mexico, where the Federal Institute of Information Access (IFAI) called on the Secretary of Government to ratify that lack of transparency and accountability will not be reinstated, reported El Universal and La Jornada.