In Monday’s Guardian, in reporting on the number of journalists around the world who have been killed so far this year, I noted that only four of the 55 victims came from Mexico.
But that relatively low figure, plucked from the death toll compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, conceals a terrible truth because it follows years of murders of media workers in that country.
To put the situation in context, I turned to a special report published on Friday by the Washington Post, Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels.
It revealed the existence of an institutionalised system of censorship imposed on editors and their editorial staff that is engineered through so-called “enlaces” - other journalists linked to, and compromised by, drug cartels.
The Post’s report, running to more than 3,000 words, details how the system operates and why - to quote one editor - “submitting to cartel demands is the only way to survive.”
It highlights the pressures on El Mañana, a newspaper in Nuevo Laredo, in northeastern Mexico near to the US border state of Texas, which also sells copies in American cities such as San Antonio and Houston.
Four of El Mañana’s journalists have been killed in the past 10 years. In February, one of its bureau chiefs was abducted and beaten. Several staff have survived murder attempts. The office has been subject to grenade and machine-gun attacks.
The current editor-in-chief, Hildebrando “Brando” Deandar Ayala, has been shot, abducted and had his home set on fire. Since 2007, he has lived in McAllen, the Texan city on the other side of the international bridge from Nuevo Laredo, for safety reasons and commutes to work.
His editorial agenda is regularly shaped by “requests” from the media director of the Zetas drug cartel, who instructs “enlaces” and reporters at several outlets on what stories the cartel wants published and which should be censored.
Sometimes the media director even provides photos and videos to accompany articles... And I’ve only touched on part of what amounts to a very disturbing story.
Full article: Washington Post
