2009

New York, May 5, 2009–A Mexican journalist who was critical of local authorities in the northern state of Durango was fatally shot by unidentified assailants on Sunday. In a piece published a day before the killing, the reporter wrote that he had been threatened by local government officials. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called…

José Luis Ortega Vidal, 42, editorial director of the daily Notisur in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz was severely injured after falling off a staircase on the morning of March 3, 2009. He was attempting to flee from a former official who was threatening him and other journalists with a gun, according to witnesses…

On March 28, 2009, several gunshots were fired at the home of Juan Antonio Zavala Hernández, publisher of the weekly newspaper Mi Ciudad in the town of Romita in central Guanajuato state. There were no injuries, the journalist told CPJ. Zavala, who said he has been repeatedly threatened by the local mayor, said he believes…

CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon and Senior Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría co-authored an op-ed that appeared today in the Spanish-language El Universal, a national paper based in Mexico City. The piece examines the importance of protecting freedom of expression in Mexico in light of increased violence and U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent meeting with counterpart Felipe Calderón.

New York, April 6, 2009–The Mexican Congress must move expeditiously to approve a constitutional reform granting federal authorities jurisdiction over crimes against free expression, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, approved a measure last week imposing penalties for crimes against “journalistic activity,” an encouraging but still preliminary…

Combating impunity has been a long and difficult process, full of obstacles and problems. At the national level it has not been easy, so much of our work is carried out using the supranational tools that we helped develop. They began taking shape through international intergovernmental declarations, in conclusions reached by international legislative and judicial…

CPJ’s Impunity Index spotlights countrieswhere journalists are slain and killers go free New York, March 23, 2009 — The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists…

New York, February 17, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for a thorough investigation into a shooting of two journalists on Friday in Mexico. A gunman killed a photographer and injured a reporter in the southern city of Iguala, Guerrero state, according to international news reports. 

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.