Mexico / Americas

Moisés Sánchez: Justice blocked by delays, errors As he was dragged from his home and into a waiting car, José Moisés Sánchez Cerezo pleaded with his attackers, “Please don’t hurt my family.” His wife, who at the time was embracing her two young grandsons, could only gaze in horror as Sánchez, the 49-year-old editor of…

Marcos Hernández Bautista: the rebel reporter Marcos Hernández Bautista usually brushed off death threats. But in January 2016, the reporter who regularly covered government corruption in towns near the Pacific coast of Oaxaca state in southern Mexico, received several menacing phone calls that seemed more serious and left him fearing for his life, said his…

Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz: A barbaric silencing Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz was not a journalist who went looking for danger. But living and working in a small town in Veracruz state—mired by gang warfare, human trafficking, and a lucrative trade in kidnap for ransom—meant he covered stories that could put in him danger.

Federal efforts to protect journalists fall short The Mexican government has responded to the crisis by creating a special federal prosecutor to investigate attacks against the press and a safety mechanism to help at-risk reporters. But journalists with whom CPJ spoke say the measures don’t go far enough.

Recommendations The Committee to Protect Journalists offers the following recommendations:

The public is robbed of information when journalists are murdered By Robert Mahoney Journalist Avijit Roy founded the blog “Mukto-Mona,” or Free Thinker, as a forum for free expression and ideas that challenged the growing religious intolerance in his native Bangladesh. His blog for intellectual freedom cost him his life.

For all its faults, Facebook is a lifeline for journalists in less developed countries By Karen Coates Squeezed between China and Vietnam, Phongsali is the northernmost province of Laos, a land of mountains, valleys and isolated villages that is home to more than 15 ethnic groups. As recently as a few years ago, news traveled…

Mexican journalists navigate threats and censorship by cartels By Elisabeth Malkin Adrián López Ortiz, the general director of Grupo Noroeste, a media group that owns the newspaper Noroeste in the northwestern Mexican city of Culiacán, was driving home from the airport in April 2014 when an SUV intercepted him. Two armed men got out and…

Governments use copyright laws and Twitter bots to curb criticism on social media By Alexandra Ellerbeck On July 10, 2016, Ecuadoran journalist Bernardo Abad tweeted that the former vice-president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, had not paid income taxes for the year before. A week later, Abad received a message from Twitter saying his account had…