International Herald Tribune Editorial - War on Mexican reporters

International Herald Tribune Editorial - War on Mexican reporters
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: January 12, 2007


Working as a reporter has become a very dangerous job in Mexico. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, seven Mexican reporters were killed last year, their work the confirmed or suspected reason. This count moves Mexico past Colombia — a country where journalists vanish with terrifying regularity. It is high enough to accomplish what the traffickers want. Widespread intimidation has brought coverage of drug trafficking virtually to a halt.

Among the most prominent of the dead are Roberto Javier Mora García, the highly respected editor of El Mañana in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, who was stabbed to death in March 2004. Alfredo Jiménez Mota, the trafficking expert at El Imparcial in Hermosillo, Sonora, has been missing since April 2005. Last year, Enrique Perea Quintanilla, editor of the Chihuahua magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad, which reported on unsolved crimes, was killed.

At respected newspapers across the north, even innocuous decisions — publishing photos of traffickers at a wedding, for example — can bring death threats. Newspapers also face financial pressure from local officials and business leaders to tamp down the reporting.

Shortly after Jiménez Mota disappeared, El Imparcial announced that conditions did not permit investigations into drug trafficking, and it would no longer do them. El Mañana stopped investigating organized crime after Mora García's death.

At most papers today, coverage of organized crime is limited to printing unsigned stories quoting official police information after a killing, and each killing is treated as an isolated event. Some will not even do this, preferring complete silence.

Last February, Vicente Fox, then the president, appointed a special federal prosecutor to investigate crimes against journalists. This was a needed statement of support, but the prosecutor's resources and mandate are limited. He has not yet brought an indictment.

In August 2005, the Inter-American Press Association convened a meeting of about 30 border editors and publishers, and they organized a group of journalists from different papers to work together on investigations. Their first story — on the disappearance of Jimenez Mota — was published and broadcast on the same day by 70 different outlets across Mexico. But the effort has since foundered without sufficient money and leadership from large papers and from international groups.

Collaboration would also require a level of trust and a culture of investigative reporting very scarce in Mexico. In the north, it grows more rare by the day.