List Of Journalists Killed In Mexico

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and among the ones with the highest levels of unsolved crimes against the press.[1] Though the exact figures of those killed are often conflicting,[2] press freedom organizations around the world agree through general consensus that Mexico is among the most dangerous countries on the planet to exercise journalism as a profession.[3][4][5] Nearly 100 media workers have been killed or disappeared since 2000, and most of these crimes remained unsolved, improperly investigated, and with few perpetrators arrested and convicted.[6]

Targeted killings of journalists in Mexico have existed since the reign of Porfirio Díaz and the Mexican Revolution in 1910.[7] When the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled the presidency in the 1930s following the Revolution, the Mexican government practically monopolized the press in Mexico in order to get favorable coverage in the media.[8][9] Journalists who complied with the modus operandi where paid with government handouts and gifts; those who did not were intimidated and/or killed. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, Mexico was the most dangerous country for journalists in all of Latin America. However, most of the attacks against the press were carried out by upset drug traffickers and corrupt law enforcement officials because they were the ones mentioned in the press.[8] Through the government's use of informal coercion and media blackout, the Mexican press became accustomed to limit their reports to what state officials said. Very few journalists dared to break away from this practice because the government would thereby threatened to withdraw their advertisements and prevent the state-owned paper agency of that time to sell newsprints for their publications.[8][10] When the Mexican government began to sell off the media public enterprises in the 1980s, more autonomous and independent newspapers with diversity in their news coverages were born. During this decade, the PRI began to lose several local and state elections, and eventually lost the presidency in 2000 to the National Action Party (PAN), after they had won every presidential election since 1929. With this political transition, Mexican readers began to prefer media outlets that showed a level of integrity and autonomy.[8][11]

When former President Felipe Calderón of the PAN took office in 2006, he carried out a military-led campaign to tackle Mexico's drug trafficking organizations. Violence across Mexico spread shortly thereafter, as rival organized crime groups fought for territorial control and with the government. This rise in drug-related murders came alongside a spike of attacks against the press, with drug cartels and corrupt officials wanting to take control the flow of information that reached the news.[12] Organized crime groups traditionally attack traditional print newspapers, either by killing, disappearing, or intimidating their

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