Mexico

2012

  
(AFP/Pedro Pardo)

Journalists still murdered where impunity reigns

Almost half of the 67 journalists killed worldwide in 2012 were targeted and murdered for their work, research by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows. The vast majority covered politics. Many also reported on war, human rights, and crime. In almost half of these cases, political groups are the suspected source of fire. There has…

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CPJ

Speak Justice campaign fights impunity in press murders

The tortured and decapitated body of 39-year-old María Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a Saturday evening in September 2011. It had been dumped by the side of a road in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican border town ravaged by the war on drugs. Macías, a freelance journalist, wrote about organized crime on social media under…

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Regina Martínez was killed in one of the most politically corrupt Mexican states. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Officials, journalists cast doubt on Veracruz murder case

Veracruz is a beautiful, long, thin state on the Gulf coast of Mexico where many journalists are terrified not only of the rampant organized crime groups that kill and control, but also of the state government. Fear that state officials will order them murdered for what they investigate or write has forced about a dozen…

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CPJ
As Venezuela's election nears, President Hugo Chávez has a clear advantage in media access because he has broken down the independent press with threats and regulations while building up a huge state media apparatus. (AP/Ariana Cubillos)

Latin American press faces violence, legal harassment

Violence and legal harassment: the two greatest obstacles to press freedom in Latin America today. That’s the message that CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon is delivering this morning in Washington, D.C., at a briefing hosted by Congressman Sam Farr. Farr, a California Democrat, hosts a monthly series looking at emerging trends in the Western Hemisphere.…

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Journalists protest the murder of a Mexican journalist earlier this year. (AFP/Sergio Hernandez)

Mexico must back up federal measure to protect press

Using guns, grenades, explosives, and other deadly means, criminals have assaulted four Mexican newsrooms in less than six weeks. One of the country’s top journalists, Lydia Cacho, was the target of a chilling death threat last month. Journalists in Veracruz have gone missing or been killed this year. Press fatalities in Mexico remain among the…

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Zeta reporter Sergio Haro in the film 'Reportero.' (Courtesy Quiet Pictures)

Film ‘Reportero’ features tenacious Mexican magazine

A week before Sunday’s crucial presidential elections in Mexico, CPJ participated on a panel with filmmaker Bernardo Ruíz and Mexican journalist Sergio Haro about the perilous conditions for journalists in that country, where CPJ research shows 48 journalists have been murdered or disappeared since outgoing President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006.

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Investigators photograph graffiti implicating the Zeta cartel near where 49 corpses were found on the road near Monterrey, Mexico, on May 13. (AFP/Julio Cesar Aguilar)

El Mañana cedes battle to report on Mexican violence

They would tell you that the killers haven’t let them cover real news for several years–if you call news serious information that’s important to the public, like why the police didn’t investigate so many murders or kidnappings or extortions. Or why drugs were sold so openly. Or that three former governors are being investigated for…

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CPJ
A journalist talks on his satellite phone outside the Rixos Hotel in Libya in August 2011. (AFP/Filippo Monteforte)

Safer mobile use is key issue for journalists

As the Internet and mobile communications become more integrated into reporters’ work, the digital threats to journalists’ work and safety have increased as well. While many press reports have documented Internet surveillance and censorship–and the efforts to combat them–mobile communications are the new frontline for journalist security.

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The offices of El Siglo de Torreón after the November 2011 attack. (Courtesy El Siglo de Torreón)

Amid Mexican impunity, paper in the crossfire

It was 3 o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, November 15, 2011, when a car stopped in front of the offices of El Siglo de Torreón, the most widely read newspaper in the northern Mexican states of Coahuila and Durango. The driver pulled the vehicle onto the shoulder, stepped out, poured gasoline on it, and…

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Defining who is a journalist, Mexican style

This month, the Mexican Senate approved an amendment to the country’s constitution that would make attacks on journalists a federal crime in Mexico.

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2012