The threat to American journalists in Mexico

Mexican journalists aren’t the only ones who are facing the danger reporting in Mexico. Many times, American journalists are targeted with threats, and sometimes death.

In July, the San Antonio Express-News took a reporter, Mariano Castillo, out of their Laredo bureau because of a threat of a hit from a drug cartel. Laredo is a bordertown on the Texas/Mexico border. Just across the Rio Grande is Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican town known for violence. On July 14, Express-News public editor Bob Richter wrote a column in the newspaper. In it, he mentions how editors had met in Nuevo Laredo to discuss ways to give courage to the reporters covering drug trafficking.

Moving Castillo out of Laredo was a difficult decision for them. But they have experience in losing reporters in Mexico. In late 1998, Philip True, a reporter convering the Huichol Indians in the mountains of Mexico, was killed when he embarked on a solo hike. His body was found in an area northwest of Guadalajara. While the killers are still avading capture, it has been found that the indians he had been writing about were the ones who killed him.

While most of my research will be about Mexican journalists and their government, I thought I’d quickly share that those killed in Mexico are not always Mexican, just how Iraqi journalists aren’t the only ones being killed in Iraq.

The start of my research

When asked to think of where the most dangerous place for a journalist to work now is, Iraq always comes to mind. It should. Nearly 112 journalists have been killed in the line of duty since the war began in March 2003, the reasons are obvious, they were killed four doing their job in a war zone.

But the second most dangerous place for journalists isn’t in a war-torn country on the other side of the world. It’s our neighbor to the south, Mexico, where more than 30 journalists have been killed since 2001, according to the Washington Post. But why is there such a large number of journalists dying in a country not at war? The answer could be because they are trying to establish something the country is not familiar with, freedom of the press.

Growing up in a border town, I heard stories about how dangerous being a journalist in Mexico was, many getting killed for asking too many questions, knowing too much of the story. But I heard that being a journalist can be dangerous anywhere you are. Journalists are the ones who would put their lives at risk for a story. But everytime I heard about another Mexican journalist killed, I would ask myself one thing: Why?

As I grew into a journalist and learned about the freedom of the press in the United States, I came to realize that the danger Mexican journalists faced was the lack of that freedom.

Through my research, I hope to find what advances the Mexican government has made to give journalists more freedom in their jobs. I also hope to find out what information found caused some of these reporters to be killed. What did they uncover that they weren’t meant to? And most importantly, what kind of impact has journalism had on Mexican politics?

KEYWORDS I’ll USE: Mexico; politics; government; journalist; freedom of press; impact WEB SITES: Reporting across the border: The challenges of U.S.-Mexico Journalismhttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=5949&categoryid=357B7E40-65BF-E7DC-44E3EC31B219E598&fuseaction=topics.events_item_topics&event_id=161802Conference on how to be a better journalist working on the U.S./Mexican borderMexico’s Most Wanted Journalist http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/05/cacho.html Interview with Lydia Cacho, who made some powerful enemies by exposing Cancun’s sex tourism industry. Now she’s taking a historic civil rights case to Mexico’s highest court.Talli Nauman: Killing Journalists in Mexico http://www.counterpunch.org/nauman01102005.html Details on Mexican journalists being killed Mexico’s press: ready for freedom?
http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/politics/presm.html The first steps Mexico has taken to allow a free press, including setting up conference for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.Mexico’s Journalists Feel Heavy Hand of Violencehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052902132.html Post story about Mexico being the second deadliest country for journalists after Iraq.