CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – A Mexican newspaper on the US border begged violent drug cartels for guidance on how to cover news in a way that would keep gangs from killing more journalists.
“You are the de facto authority in the city now,” El Diario newspaper said yesterday in an editorial, referring to cartels that have killed over 6,400 people in Ciudad Juarez since 2008.
“Explain what you want from us, what you want us to publish or stop publishing,” the paper said.
Mexico is considered by media groups to be one of the world’s most dangerous places for reporters.
More than 30 media workers have disappeared or been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drug cartels in late 2006, the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report this month.
Mexican newspapers are increasingly censoring their coverage of the drug war, and El Diario did not mention either of the drug lords fighting to control the city.
Some media have stopped mentioning the drug cartels by name or reporting on shootouts when they happen. Ciudad Juarez’s reporters speculate that cartels have killed journalists just for mentioning drug lords or their rivals in their stories.
El Diario, which publishes across the border from El Paso, Texas, said one of its photographers was killed by drug gang hitmen last week. He was the second journalist from the paper killed in the last two years.
“We don’t want any more deaths,” the paper said. “Tell us what you want from us.”
Mounting attacks on the media is just one face of the rising drug violence that has claimed more than 29,000 lives since Calderon took office, undermining Mexico’s global image and threatening a recovery from recession in Latin America’s second-largest economy.
Thousands of Mexican troops and elite federal police have been unable to quell a brutal offensive in Ciudad Juarez by Mexico’s most wanted narcotics trafficker, Joaquin ‘Shorty’ Guzman, for control of the city.
Guzman wants to wrest control of the city from Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, long-time head of the Juarez drug cartel, who drug experts say handles about a fifth of a drug business believed to earn up to $40 billion a year for the cartels.
