Mexico / Americas

  

Mexican weekly goes offline after cyberattack

New York, November 28, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports of a cyberattack on Mexican weekly Ríodoce that forced its website offline on Friday. Ríodoce is one of the few publications to cover crime and drug trafficking in Mexico.

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CPJ
CPJ's annual International Press Freedom Awards dinner took place at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. (Michael Nagle/Getty Images for CPJ)

Awardees to their colleagues: Buck the system

The Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria might seem like an odd venue to stage a call for resistance. Nine hundred people in tuxedos and gowns. Champagne and cocktails. Bill Cunningham snapping photos. This combination is generally more likely to coax a boozy nostalgia than foment a revolution. But the journalists honored last night at…

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Umar Cheema, left, of Pakistan and Javier Valdez Cárdenas of Mexico, both 2011 International Press Freedom Award winners, are all too familiar with the culture of impunity. (CPJ)

A call to continue the struggle against impunity

Last night, hundreds of journalists and members of New York’s press freedom community met at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan for the Committee to Protect Journalists’ XXI annual International Press Freedom Awards. At the event–celebrating the extraordinary courage of five journalists from across the globe–guests and award recipients unanimously expressed their commitment to fighting…

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Two newspaper employees missing in Mexico

New York, November 16, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by reports that two newspaper employees in Mexico have been missing since Monday and that in their last communication, the men said they were being followed by police cars.

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Mexican daily offices attacked by gunmen

New York, November 15, 2011–A group of unidentified gunmen attacked the premises of the Mexican daily El Siglo de Torreón early this morning, setting a car on fire and shooting at the building several times. Around 2:40 a.m., at least three assailants parked two vehicles in front of the newspaper’s offices in the city of…

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A marcher stops to write a peace slogan during an August 2011 protest against Mexican violence. (AP)

Mexican cartels keep up social media intimidation

The dissemination of reports and graphic photos of a dead man, reportedly decapitated and left in the border city of Nuevo Laredo with a warning that he was murdered for using a chat room, appears to be the latest attempt by organized crime to intimidate social media users and control the online agenda. While it’s…

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Smoke pours out from the front of the El Buen Tono offices. (Reuters)

Newspaper offices set on fire in Mexico

New York, November 7, 2011–A group of unidentified gunmen stormed into the newsroom of the daily El Buen Tono in the state of Veracruz on Sunday, vandalized equipment, and set the premises on fire, according to local press reports.

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María Elizabeth Macías Castro's killers left this note. (AFP)

Mexico murder may be social media watershed

María Elizabeth Macías Castro’s killers made sure their actions were understood. In a macabre, carefully orchestrated mise-en-scene, they placed her body in front of a poster with the ominous note. Nearby they left a computer keyboard, with a pair of headphones on her decapitated head.

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Mexican police reporter missing in Veracruz

New York, September 29, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports that Mexican journalist Manuel Gabriel Fonseca Hernández has gone missing from the city of Acayucán, in Veracruz state. Fonseca’s friends first reported him missing on September 20, police records show.

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Journalist’s decapitated body found in Mexico

New York, September 26, 2011–The decapitated body of Mexican journalist Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a road near the city of Nuevo Laredo on Saturday, news reports said.

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