Mexico

New York, June 20, 2011--A prominent Mexican newspaper columnist, his wife, and a son were shot to death in their home in Veracruz, according to state investigators, a shocking assault that underscores the country's ongoing crisis. The administration of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa must take decisive action to end to the cycle of violence undermining Mexico's democracy, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.    

New York, June 10, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Mexican authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the abduction of news editor Marco Antonio López Ortiz, who appears to have been kidnapped on Tuesday in Acapulco, Guerrero state.

New York, June 2, 2011--With the news that the body of Noel López Olguín, a Mexican reporter who went missing in March, was found on Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Mexican authorities to thoroughly investigate his murder. López was found Tuesday buried in a clandestine grave in the city of Chinameca, in the state of Veracruz, according to local news reports.

New York, June 1, 2011--A drug gang leader confessed on Sunday to killing Mexican reporter Noel López Olguín, a columnist for a small newspaper in the state of Veracruz who went missing in March, according to local press reports. Gustavo Salas, the Mexican federal attorney general's special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression, told CPJ on Tuesday that his office is taking up the case.

CPJ’s 2011 Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, May 31, 2011--Vanguardia, the oldest and largest newspaper in the city Saltillo, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, was the target of a hand grenade attack on Sunday, according to local press reports. No injuries were reported.

Lately, we have come to expect violence against journalists in certain regions, such as the Middle East. But here at CPJ, 2011 has also been troubling for the number of journalists killed in an entirely different part of the world, the Americas. 

"We have a big story coming out tomorrow," Adela Navarro Bello, the co-editor of the muckraking Tijuana weekly Zeta, said when I visited the newspaper last Thursday. "There's a breakthrough in the investigation into the murder of Ortiz Franco."

New York, March 29, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the shooting death of Mexican photographer Luis Emanuel Ruiz Carrillo on Friday and calls on Mexican authorities to launch a thorough investigation into his killing.  

Major Mexican press organizations agreed today on a code for coverage of organized crime, a step seen as a national breakthrough that could set professional standards well into the future. Though organized crime has been the major story in Mexico for several years, coverage has been haphazard based on time, place, and news organization. The problem with today's agreement is that organized crime cartels are so powerful in many parts of the country that they will likely be able to block some of the most important elements of the accord with the same intimidation they use to control much of the press already.