The major daily in the war-wracked Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, El Diario, surprised media around the globe on Saturday when it published an unusual editorial that openly compromises the paper’s coverage in order to preserve its journalists’ lives.Under the headline, “What do you want from us?,” the editorial pleads for the cartels to stop killing journalists, and asks…
CPJ’s Senior Program Coordinator for the Americas Carlos Lauría was live on the national radio show “The Takeaway” this morning talking about the ongoing deterioration of the media environment in Mexico. Lauría was joined by New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.
CPJ’s Joel Simon will be live on Wednesday on “The Kojo Nnamdi Show,” a daily news public radio show in Washington. Joining Simon will be Iraqi journalist Haider Hamza, who has covered the war in Iraq for Reuters and ABC News, and Alfredo Corchado, the Mexico bureau chief for The Dallas Morning News, in a…
On June 7, we wrote to Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa about a series of attacks perpetrated against local journalists by federal law enforcement since the beginning of the year. The office of the Mexican president responded on June 16. In a letter to CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, Calderón informed us that our letter was submitted to the attorney general’s…
Four Mexican journalists have been killed so far this year, at least one in reprisal for his work, and several remain missing after a lethal wave of violence in the border city of Reynosa in late February. Pervasive self-censorship is affecting vast regions of the country as a result of the bloody battle for turf between powerful…
CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon testified today before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, saying that while democracies are prevalent in Latin America, the press continues to operate with few institutional protections. This statement was submitted into the record on Monday.
Each year, UNESCO honors a courageous international journalist with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, named in honor of the Colombian editor murdered in 1986 by the Medellín Cartel. The prize is chosen by an independent jury and over the years I’ve attended several moving ceremonies in which some of the most daring journalists…
We will not make significant advances in the battle against crimes against journalists and the impunity surrounding them without the creation of a sense of unity and solidarity among a country’s news media and journalists. Nor will the cause advance without a strategy by international press freedom organizations to provide support for those two values.