Mexican journalists face ever-increasing danger

There is an often-repeated phrase among journalists: No
story is worth dying for, we say. But journalists are dying in every region of
the world. In Iraq, in Somalia, in Russia,
in Bolivia, in the Philippines,
journalists died last year while reporting the news in their countries.

Journalists are dying at the U.S.-Mexico border, too. And
they are vanishing in frightening numbers. Since 2000, 24 Mexican journalists
have been killed. In the past three years alone, seven journalists have
disappeared, making Mexico
the only country in the region where journalists have been reported missing. CPJ
now classifies Mexico
as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Without a
doubt, it is the most dangerous country in Latin America.

Those disturbing findings brought CPJ to Tijuana
and San Diego
this week. Carlos Lauria, CPJ's
Americas senior program coordinator, and board member Clarence Page presented Attacks on the Press to nearly 60
journalists in
Tijuana on Tuesday, as Executive Director Joel Simon presented the report to the United
Nations and other CPJ representatives discussed the report in Cairo
and Madrid.

On Wednesday, Lauria and Page reviewed the findings during a
session at the Institute of the Americas,
a nonprofit organization on campus of the University
of California, San
Diego, headed by Jeffrey Davidow, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico
and Venezuela.
They told the audience of reporters, students, and professors about the
self-censorship that is occurring among Mexican journalists who fear for their
lives if they report on organized crime or the link between organized crime and
government officials.

They said the threat to journalists has spread from
dangerous border cities such as Nuevo Laredo--where
the newsroom of the daily newspaper El
Manana was the target of a February 2006 grenade attack--to once "safe"
cities such as the industrial northern Mexico city
of Monterrey.

Lauria explained that reporters in small cities and towns
far from Mexico City
are most often the targets of murders and disappearances. In those distant
cities, serious criminal investigations are rarely pursued by the authorities.
As a result, few of the crimes committed against journalists since 2000 have
been solved.

As Lauria spoke, the tragic statistics on murdered and
missing journalists flashed across a screen:

CPJ is pressing Mexican President Felipe Calderon's
government to enact a law that would make it a federal crime to murder a
journalist--something that would be considered in a broader context an attack on
freedom of expression. Two bills are before the Mexican Congress now. As
attacks against journalists continue, CPJ--and Mexico's journalists--await the
results.

Comments

Today the New York Times ran a very interesting video about the dangers facing Mexican journalists. The filmmakers follow the journalists around Juarez as they risk their lives to tell the story of what is happening in the drug war in Mexico.