Veracruz journalist shot dead after reporting on oil theft

Committee to Protect Journalists: The body of Veracruz radio journalist Armando Saldaña Morales was found on Monday in the neighboring Mexican state of Oaxaca, according to the Oaxaca state attorney general's office and news reports. The journalist had been shot dead, the reports said. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder and calls on authorities to identify the motive in the killing and ensure the perpetrators are held to account.

"Journalists have paid a high price for reporting the news in Mexico-they are routinely murdered or disappeared with total impunity," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, from New York. "Federal authorities must fully investigate this crime, look deeply into Armando Saldaña Morales' reporting as a possible motive, and bring those responsible to justice." Read more. 

Murders, threats and duopoly: the state of press freedom in Mexico

The Guardian: On 2 January, journalist Moisés Sánchez was kidnapped by an armed group. Nine people with covered faces stormed into his house in Medellin de Bravo, a town in the wealthy eastern state of Veracruz. They searched and grabbed documents, and took Sánchez, along with his camera, laptop, mobile phone and tablet. The police took hours to come to the house. Sánchez was found dead 23 days later on the outskirts of the town.

Sánchez, editor of La Unión, is the eleventh journalist to be murdered in Veracruz since Governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa took office on 1 December 2010. As well as murders, four media professionals have gone missing and there have been 132 attacks against the local press in the same period. Read more. 

Latin American Herald Tribune - Sexism of Authorities Aggravates Violence Against Women Journalists in Mexico

Latin American Herald Tribune: The sexism of Mexican authorities generates impunity and has led to a 300 percent increase in violence against women journalists in just a decade, according to a report presented by an NGO.

In the last few years 86 cases of violence against women journalists were reported, of which 54 percent occurred in 2013, the study by the Communication and Information for Women organization (CIMAC) revealed. Read more. 

Mexican Authorities Extend Protection to Journalist

Latin American Herald Tribune: Police in Mexico have extended protection to a journalist whose 12-year-old son was fatally shot last week in an attack on the family’s home.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement earlier this week calling on Mexican authorities to protect Indalecio Benitez, director of La Calentana Mexiquense, a community radio station in the central state of Mexico.  Read more. 

Mexico Lags in Taking Steps to Protect Journalists, According to Several Reports

April 28, 2014
Justice in Mexico 

According to a recent review by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico ranks in the bottom seven countries worldwide in its efforts to investigate and punish crimes against journalists. With this ranking, Mexico remains in the same position it found itself in 2013 in CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, ranking above only Iraq, Somalia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Afghanistan.

CPJ found that Mexico has 0.132 unsolved murders of journalists per million inhabitants. By comparison, Iraq, at the bottom of the list, had 3.067 unsolved murders per million inhabitants. Afghanistan, ranking 6th, had 0.168, while India (13th) had just 0.006. Colombia and Brazil were the only other Latin American countries included on the list, with Colombia ranking one spot below Mexico, with 0.126 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants, and Brazil at the 11th position, with 0.045. CPJ criticized that “justice continued to evade Mexican journalists who face unrelenting violence for reporting on crime and corruption.” The organization reports 16 journalists killed with impunity during the past ten years, with one killed in 2014, though other groups, including Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) estimate the number to be much higher. CPJ did recognize Mexico’s efforts last April to create a special federal prosecutor for pursuing crimes against journalists that circumvents what it deems “more corrupt and less effective state law enforcement officials.” Nevertheless, it says, many criticize that the new office has thus far been slow to implement its new authority. The report points out the failed prosecution in the case of Proceso reporter Regina Martínez Pérez, killed in 2012, in which some, including the editorial board of Proceso, believe that the wrong person was convicted for her murder. It also mentions the dismissal of charges last September against one of the men alleged to have gunned down Zeta magazine editor J. Jesús Blancornelas in 1997. These shortcomings, says CPJ, “further fueled concerns that the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto is not up to the task of breaking Mexico’s cycle of impunity and violence.” Read more. 

Journalist: Drugs destroying Mexico

CNN
November 8th, 2013

Becky Anderson talks with Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández about the country's war on drugs who also wrote an Op-ed for CNN.com. You can read it below:

Since December 2010, I have lived with death threats because I have documented and revealed corruption at the highest levels in the Mexican government. My family has been attacked, I have to live with bodyguards and some of my sources have been killed or are in jail.

But my case is just one of many. A large number of journalists and human rights activists - as well as those who denounce corruption in Mexico - receive similar threats or have been killed. And the biggest danger is not in fact the drug cartels, but rather the government and business officials that work for them and fear exposure.

My new book "Narcoland" is the result of five grueling years of research. Over this time I gradually became immersed in a shadowy world full of traps, lies, betrayals, and contradictions.  Read more. 

MORE THAN FIFTEEN JOURNALISTS ASSAULTED DURING MEXICO CITY MARCHES

Reporters Without Borders
October 3, 2013

Reporters Without Borders condemns the assault of more than fifteen journalists by demonstrators and police in Mexico City yesterday while they were covering parades marking the 45th anniversary of a student massacre in 1968. The figure is conservative.

“Reporters Without Borders calls on the Special Attorney’s office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE) to open independent investigations to get to the bottom of these assaults and punish those responsible,” the press freedom organization said.

“We have previously noted that that abuses directed at journalists covering demonstrations will continue unless they are punished. The trivialization of violence against journalists undermines media coverage of events of this nature. We point out that, without journalists, the demonstrators’ message would not be heard by the public.”

Guillermo Barros of the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) told Reporters Without Borders: “I was covering the parade when the police started hitting the demonstrators to disperse them. Even though I identified myself as a journalist, a police officer struck me on the head with his baton.”  Read more. 

Journalist found slain in Mexican state of Oaxaca

LA Times
By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez
July 17, 2013

A journalist who covered the police beat in the Mexican state of Oaxaca was found dead Wednesday, reportedly with gunshot wounds.

It was unclear whether Alberto Lopez Bello was attacked in retaliation for his work for El Imparcial, a newspaper in the city of Oaxaca, the state capital. The paper published a brief statement Wednesday demanding a thorough investigation and saying the killing “demonstrates the vulnerability to which communicators are exposed in their daily work of providing truthful and timely information to the citizenry.” [link in Spanish]

The Oaxacan state government said that Lopez's body was found along with the corpse of another man in Trinidad de Viguera, a city north of the Oaxacan capital. The news website Milenio reported that Lopez suffered gunshot wounds.  Read more. 

Advocates for Press Freedoms Take Action for Slain US Reporter Brad Will

For Immediate Release

(Houston, May 1) Advocates for press freedom and human rights are pressuring President Obama to remember murdered US journalist, Brad Will, who was slain in broad daylight by Mexican government-backed paramilitaries over six years ago. They issued an 'Action Alert' today, for people who shared their concern with the impunity with which the murder of a US journalist has been greeted in Mexico, to contact senior Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont. The alert urged Senator Leahy to ask the President, on his trip to Mexico this week, to "raise to Mexican President Nieto publicly the lack of sound prosecution of the shooters who murdered Brad Will and . . .(to) insist that accountability for his murder, and the murder of other journalists, mostly Mexican, who had, before they were killed, been publishing stories of corruption and brutality by top Mexican government officials, be achieved promptly".

Senator Leahy was instrumental in inserting a requirement for an investigation into Brad Will's murder in earlier appropriations for Plan Mexico, a militarization package that has poured guns and other lethal aid into the Mexican military and police, forces that are widely seen as unaccountable, corrupt and which systematically abuse human rights. The resulting violence has contributed to the estimated 100,000 murders of civilians many of whom were innocent bystanders uninvolved in the drug trade.

As the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, Senator Leahy has the power to influence President Obama's discussions with President Nieto of Mexico, a major recipient of US military aid.

Brad Will was murdered in broad daylight over six years ago. There were many witnesses. Mexican government officials, at least four of them, were identified as the shooters. Yet only two were questioned by the Mexican prosecutor's office and both let go without charge.

Mexican journalists, rights groups march against attacks in which scores have been slain

The Huffington Post
By Associated Press
April 28, 2013

XALAPA, Mexico — Officials in Veracruz state say they know who killed Regina Martinez. The muckraking reporter, found beaten and suffocated in her house, was just the victim of a robbery, according to prosecutors and a local court.

But many of her colleagues don’t believe it. The man convicted of the crime was tortured into a confession, they allege. And the magazine she works for says state officials discussed sending police across the country in an attempt to hunt down and seize another reporter who raised questions about the death, which is one of a growing list of killings that have put Mexico among the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist.


Some 400 people gathered Sunday in the center of Veracruz’s state capital, Xalapa, for a march to demand justice in the Martinez case and an end to attacks on the press. Many held up posters suggesting the government had a hand in the case, some describing it as “a state killing.” Dozens also protested in Mexico City.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a February report that 12 Mexican journalists went missing in 2006-2012 and 14 were killed because of their work. Mexico’s federal Human Rights Commission lists 81 journalists killed since 2000.  Read more. 

Full investigation needed in Mexican journalist's murder

Committee to Protect Journalists 

Mexico City, April 25, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists joins journalists with the Mexican daily Vanguardia in calling on authorities to launch an efficient and thorough investigation into the murder of photographer Daniel Martínez Balzaldúa.

Martínez's body was found with that of a friend, Julián Zamora Garcia, early Wednesday morning on a street in Saltillo, Vanguardía reported. He had last been seen by his colleagues at the daily's offices around 3 p.m. Tuesday before he left to cover an event. He never arrived.

Martínez, 22, had worked for Vanguardia for only a month and had been assigned to the daily's society section, which is an entry-level position, according to Ricardo Mendoza, the paper's editorial director. Another editor at Vanguardia, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, told CPJ that the climate of fear in Coahuila state prevented the newspaper from doing any investigation in stories with links to organized crime. Photographers covering the society section in Mexico have been targeted by organized crime groups in the past for inadvertently capturing images of cartel members, according to CPJ research.  Read more.

Mexico reporter Regina Martinez's murderer sentenced

BBC
April 10, 2013

A judge in Mexico has sentenced a man to 38 years in prison over the 2012 murder of crime reporter Regina Martinez Perez.

Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva was found guilty of homicide and robbery.

Regina Martinez, a correspondent for news magazine Proceso, was found beaten and strangled to death in her home in Xalapa, in eastern Veracruz state.

The prosecution says Hernandez confessed the crime, but colleagues of Ms Martinez say he was set up.

Ms Martinez had been working for the investigative news magazine Proceso for 10 years when her brothers reported finding her body in her home.

Read more. 

Twitter: The Safest Place for Citizen Journalists in Mexico

Mashable: Fran Berkman

A cohort of Twitter users with fake names and profile pictures have become a trusted source of information regarding drug cartel violence in Mexico.

These citizen journalists choose to remain anonymous to avoid violent backlash from gang members, but their reports have become increasingly influential.

On Jan. 8, a team from Microsoft Research published a paper called "The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare," which details a social media study conducted over the past two years. Their main finding was that as Mexicans increasingly turn to Twitter for reports of violence, a core of mostly anonymous yet trusted curators have led the dissemination of public safety information.

"You find this small cluster of people, whom we call curators, who tend to be really well-regarded in their cities," Andrés Monroy-Hernández, one of the paper's five co-authors, tells Mashable. "These particular curators are those that have a lot of followers, which means that they're somewhat trusted by the community."

In the paper, the authors discuss how difficult it was to contact and interview the curators, who feel the work puts their lives in danger. Read more. 

Mexican press: Self preservation becomes self censorship

XIndex  November 16, 2012

In Mexico drug cartels continue to dictate news agenda and in some areas, have even infiltrated the newsroom. A new investigation by Fundacion MEPI reveals the extent to which news outlets fear of cartel retaliation and a shortage of accurate government information keep the public in the dark.

MEXICO CITY – It was 38 minutes into the First Division football match at the Santos Modelo Stadium, about 275 miles from the US border, when players suddenly started running from the pitch to their locker rooms. Popping sounds interrupted the announcers. More than one million Mexican television viewers watched as a firefight between the country’s most ruthless drug cartel and local police unfolded.

The images broadcast from the industrial town of Torreon showed terrified men, women and children crouching under the stadium seats and scrambling for cover. Television Azteca, the second largest Mexican network, stopped transmission of the game. But ESPN continued, breaking its audience records worldwide for a domestic soccer match.

It was the first time drug-related violence had played out on live television alongside the country’s beloved national sport. But it also highlighted another battle, one raging inside the local Mexican media as criminal groups have continue to muzzle regional reporting on drug violence —  savagery that has left more than 60,000 dead since outgoing President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

Despite the stadium gun battle’s obvious news value, in the newsroom of the local daily El Siglo de Torreon, editors and reporters pondered whether to publish news of the shootout in a prominent place in the following day’s paper.  The attack had pitted the Zetas organised crime group against a municipal police contingent parked near the stadium.  Read more. 

Shaky Case Against Suspect in Mexican Journalist's Murder Raises Suspicions

InSightCrime, Written by Geoffrey Ramsey Friday, 09 November 2012

The arrest of a man accused of the murder of a journalist investigating crime and corruption in Veracruz raises more questions than answers, pointing to the failures of law enforcement and power of criminal groups in the Mexican state.

On October 30, Veracruz's attorney general announced that police had arrested Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva, alias "El Silva," on suspicion of involvement in the April murder of journalist Regina Martinez Perez. The official said that the suspect had confessed to helping another person commit the crime. The man who physically carried out the murder, according to authorities, is Jose Adrian Hernandez Dominguez, alias "El Jarocho," allegedly Martinez's romantic partner, who remains at large.

Yet as El Proceso reports, there is reason to doubt Silva's involvement in Martinez's murder. The day after his supposed "confession," the suspect said he had been coerced into admitting guilt by police who tortured him and threatened to kill his mother. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes that without the confession, there appears to be little proof of Silva's involvement, as prosecutors have made no mention of eyewitness, DNA or fingerprint evidence linking him to the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, authorities ordered Silva to be held in pre-trial detention on November 2. Read more. 

Is Mexico's drug violence scaring off the next generation of journalists?

CS Monitor: Drug violence has made Mexico a dangerous place to be a reporter, and it is affecting journalism schools that now struggle to keep their doors open and train aspiring journalists.

By Sara Miller Llana, Oct. 11.

MEXICO CITY. Grenades have exploded in newspaper offices. Reporters have been kidnapped and murdered, sometimes dismembered and stuffed into garbage bags. Several journalists have fled Mexico for their safety.

It’s not exactly a selling atmosphere for Mexican journalists, especially those in school who could opt to study business or technology instead of a craft that has become one of the most dangerous in the world when practiced in Mexico. Read more.

Mexico journalists' killings solved? Critics doubt it.

LA Times: Veracruz state authorities say drug cartel members responsible for killing five news workers have been arrested or slain. An advocacy group doesn't buy it.

By Tracy Wilkinson. MEXICO CITY — With rare speed, authorities in the violence-plagued coastal state of Veracruz say they have solved the killings of five journalists and news media workers, pinning the slayings on two notorious drug cartels.

But press freedom advocates Thursday questioned what they considered a too facile resolution of one of the most alarming strings of journalism attacks in a country where such bloodshed has become all too familiar.

"The government of Veracruz is trying to shelve its worst-ever crisis of violence against the press," the advocacy group Article 19 said in a statement. It criticized Veracruz authorities for blaming all the slayings on a group of detainees who supposedly confessed but have yet to go before a court. Read more. Read more.

Man arrested in Mexico carrying slain newspaper worker's ID

CNN: Mexico City - A presumed member of the Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartel has been arrested in Veracruz, Mexico, carrying identification cards belonging to a newspaper administrator who was killed in May, the Mexican military said Monday.

The arrest of Juan Carlos Hernandez Pulido, also known as La Bertha, occurred as a result of a tip from an informant who told authorities someone in a car appeared to be sharing drugs, the navy said in a statement. Read more.

US worried by organised crime attacks on Mexican media

BBC: The US has voiced its concern at how organised crime is targeting Mexican reporters in an attempt to intimidate them and limit news coverage.

"We are on the side of journalists who are risking their lives," said Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

He was speaking a day after the offices of a newspaper in northern Mexico were attacked for the third time in a month. Read more.

Mexican newspaper office set on fire in 2nd attack this month

CNN: Two masked men set the offices of a prominent Mexican newspaper on fire Sunday, the second such attack on the daily this month.

The armed men walked into the Sierra Madre office of the El Norte newspaper in the northern city of Monterrey, threatened a security guard, poured gasoline out of canisters and lit the building on fire, the newspaper said. Read more.