Freedom of the press | A dangerous profession in Mexico

Threats, violence, death: outside of war zones, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world in which to work as a reporter. The year 2022 has started in a particularly brutal way for the Mexican media. At least seven journalists have been killed in just over two months.

Janie Gosselin
The Press

“I no longer know how to react; it’s so painful,” says América Armenta, a Mexican political journalist on the phone. Northwestjoined by The Press as part of World Press Freedom Day.

Each death of a colleague or a colleague rekindles the anger of the 32-year-old woman. His own boss and mentor, Javier Valdez, was killed in 2017.

They worked together in Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa, well known for the cartel of the same name. Mr. Valdez wrote about organized crime and violence in the region.

The murder has not been solved.

“The number one factor that feeds the current situation is the very high and constant rate of impunity in Mexico”, specifies on the telephone Jan-Albert Hootsen, representative for Mexico of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A fraction of crimes against journalists lead to a conviction.

CPJ lists seven media worker deaths so far this year – six were shot and one was stabbed. An investigation is still underway for half of these murders to determine if there is a link between their deaths and their profession.

Because violence is not exclusive to members of the media in this country marked by corruption and where drug traffickers flout the law.

Femicide is one example. An example, too, of the difficulty reporters have in covering certain subjects, underlines M^me Armenta, when official records to investigate the disappearance of women are inaccessible or when the possible involvement of criminals pushes journalists to self-censor.

The climate has been tense for years for the Mexican media, but the coming to power in 2018 of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with his populist and anti-media speeches, did nothing to calm the situation.

“By and large, López Obrador’s government doesn’t actively persecute journalists, but it does do a dismal job of prosecuting those who do,” notes Hootsen.

Even in Cancun

Even the city of Cancún, known to Quebecers for its beaches and tourist activities, has not escaped the violence, and an attempted murder against the director of web publication CGNoticias was reported in February.

“I am angry with everything that is happening in the country and I am worried,” Fernanda Duque, a journalist contacted in Cancún, said on the phone. I fear it will become more common and may affect me in the next few years. »

The 32-year-old woman notably covers health and education at Novedades Quintana Roo. She joined a group of journalists from the region to ask the political authorities to guarantee freedom of the press and to denounce the working conditions of journalists.

Because, she says, violence is also “economic”: the methods offered by certain media are also a source of questioning for her about the future of the profession.

The upcoming elections in June to appoint the governor of the state of Quintana Roo are making her nervous. “It’s always a dangerous time for journalists in Mexico because politicians are constantly trying to make us write what they want, to make us feel unsafe,” adds the one who has worked in the profession for about a decade.

América Armenta has an unfortunate memory of its last coverage of the elections last year. She was then working on a story of corruption. The day after the article was published, someone broke into her home to steal her computer, tablet and USB keys, she says.

“I no longer live in the same place,” she adds. I no longer slept. »

Despite everything, she has no intention of changing her profession.

“It’s important, it’s what I love, it’s what I do,” she says.

In Mexico, freedom of the press is highlighted on June 7 – 7 of junior. This is the name of the association of journalists with which M^me Armenta demonstrates from time to time to defend his profession. “We take public space whenever we think we have to,” she says. We almost always go out when a journalist is martyred. »