TIJUANA,
Mexico: Mexican journalists are no stranger to the dangers their
Pakistani counterparts face. They run the risk of lives and livelihood
all the time but continue braving the odds.
As Pakistani journalists started facing fatal risks with the onset of war against terrorism with military and militants pitted against each other and the media caught in their cross-fire, situation is almost similar in Mexico with one difference.
Here drug cartels fight each other and also combat the security forces as a war against them has been launched spiking violence and kidnapping.
Even this city, Tijuana, that borders with US (California) is not immune to violence. The journalists here are as threatened as elsewhere since the drug cartels have a strong presence here for smuggling drugs into the United States,
Incidentally, Mexican journalists also accuse certain sections of the security forces for being either thick with the drug dealers or thin in action against them. So, in this hide-and-seek game, journalists are hot targets of the mafia and government’s apathy is apparent from the available statistics showing that not a single journalist’s murder has been resolved like in Pakistan.
In Mexico, another killing field for journalists, where 48 journalists have either been killed or disappeared in last five years alone, this massacre started no sooner the government announced a war against the narcotics traffickers, a crusade which has led rival cartels to fight for control of the profitable drug routes into the US.
Although international organisations of journalists continue mounting pressure on the government for immediate action to arrest this trend, there is no let-up.
In Ciudad Juarez, a city that sees an average of eight murders a day, journalists put competition for exclusive stories aside and call each other when news breaks, so they can travel to cover developments as a group. Journalists have also become used to giving up their bylines for a simple “staff” byline when they write a story that may infuriate a cartel leader or government official.
A recent study by MEPI Foundation found that self-censorship is so pervasive that investigative work is dying by the day.
In an effort to determine how pervasive self-censorship has become, the foundation studied the coverage of drug-related crimes by 11 regional newspapers, as well as the national edition of Milenio and El Universal in 2010 and then again in 2011.
The MEPI found that in Nuevo Laredo and other crime-ridden cities, the press was barely covering gangland executions and other drug-related crimes. And if they published stories on those types of crimes, they did so without mentioning suspects.
“We don’t know how bad things are in some regions of the country because of self-censorship,” said a US journalist who has been covering Mexico for many years now.
So much so that the university students are taught separate courses especially to the ones who have to practice journalism in the border areas where threats increase further due to thick presence of the traffickers. Teachers advise them two things: 1) stay neutral and out of grey areas; 2) talk more about the everyday life in the city - politics, economics, showbiz, and less about the traffickers.
Another advice being religiously preached to the working journalists these days may have an education for journalists in Pakistan: “More ethically and neutrally you practice, more risk you reduce.” They are simultaneously told that objective reporting is not an insurance policy against the threats, it however mitigates the risks to a certain extent due to the moral force such a report carries.
Journalism has a different mission than that of a criminal justice system, said Marco Lara Klhar, a Mexican professor who spent 29 years in journalism mainly focusing on violence, crime and social conflicts. We journalists have a serious confusion of identity as sometimes we become prosecutors, policeman and sometimes journalists, he explains to make a point that this multi-faceted role put them under trouble apart from being unethical. “Being ethical is something to very protective.”
Javier Dario Restrepo echoes the same line. An 80-year old Javier, has been a journalist for 53-years in Columbia, another dangerous place for journalists, teaches ethical practices throughout Latin America. Threats increase when we become ethical, he said speaking at a round-table discussion in University of California (San Diego), jointly organized by World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, Article 19 and Institute of the Americas. A journalist is not a judge or a policeman but a well-informed citizen, a surrogate of public. Instead of becoming a judge or a policeman, Javier further explained, a journalist’s information should pressure the judges and police into taking action and delivering timely justice.
Javier said there are two components of a news: how big it is in terms of receiving feedback and what changes it cause. But journalists in general remain more focused at the former, forgetting the latter aspect. In the meanwhile, they themselves become victim of reporting causing a hell of change in their family’s life.
(The News International)
As Pakistani journalists started facing fatal risks with the onset of war against terrorism with military and militants pitted against each other and the media caught in their cross-fire, situation is almost similar in Mexico with one difference.
Here drug cartels fight each other and also combat the security forces as a war against them has been launched spiking violence and kidnapping.
Even this city, Tijuana, that borders with US (California) is not immune to violence. The journalists here are as threatened as elsewhere since the drug cartels have a strong presence here for smuggling drugs into the United States,
Incidentally, Mexican journalists also accuse certain sections of the security forces for being either thick with the drug dealers or thin in action against them. So, in this hide-and-seek game, journalists are hot targets of the mafia and government’s apathy is apparent from the available statistics showing that not a single journalist’s murder has been resolved like in Pakistan.
In Mexico, another killing field for journalists, where 48 journalists have either been killed or disappeared in last five years alone, this massacre started no sooner the government announced a war against the narcotics traffickers, a crusade which has led rival cartels to fight for control of the profitable drug routes into the US.
Although international organisations of journalists continue mounting pressure on the government for immediate action to arrest this trend, there is no let-up.
In Ciudad Juarez, a city that sees an average of eight murders a day, journalists put competition for exclusive stories aside and call each other when news breaks, so they can travel to cover developments as a group. Journalists have also become used to giving up their bylines for a simple “staff” byline when they write a story that may infuriate a cartel leader or government official.
A recent study by MEPI Foundation found that self-censorship is so pervasive that investigative work is dying by the day.
In an effort to determine how pervasive self-censorship has become, the foundation studied the coverage of drug-related crimes by 11 regional newspapers, as well as the national edition of Milenio and El Universal in 2010 and then again in 2011.
The MEPI found that in Nuevo Laredo and other crime-ridden cities, the press was barely covering gangland executions and other drug-related crimes. And if they published stories on those types of crimes, they did so without mentioning suspects.
“We don’t know how bad things are in some regions of the country because of self-censorship,” said a US journalist who has been covering Mexico for many years now.
So much so that the university students are taught separate courses especially to the ones who have to practice journalism in the border areas where threats increase further due to thick presence of the traffickers. Teachers advise them two things: 1) stay neutral and out of grey areas; 2) talk more about the everyday life in the city - politics, economics, showbiz, and less about the traffickers.
Another advice being religiously preached to the working journalists these days may have an education for journalists in Pakistan: “More ethically and neutrally you practice, more risk you reduce.” They are simultaneously told that objective reporting is not an insurance policy against the threats, it however mitigates the risks to a certain extent due to the moral force such a report carries.
Journalism has a different mission than that of a criminal justice system, said Marco Lara Klhar, a Mexican professor who spent 29 years in journalism mainly focusing on violence, crime and social conflicts. We journalists have a serious confusion of identity as sometimes we become prosecutors, policeman and sometimes journalists, he explains to make a point that this multi-faceted role put them under trouble apart from being unethical. “Being ethical is something to very protective.”
Javier Dario Restrepo echoes the same line. An 80-year old Javier, has been a journalist for 53-years in Columbia, another dangerous place for journalists, teaches ethical practices throughout Latin America. Threats increase when we become ethical, he said speaking at a round-table discussion in University of California (San Diego), jointly organized by World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, Article 19 and Institute of the Americas. A journalist is not a judge or a policeman but a well-informed citizen, a surrogate of public. Instead of becoming a judge or a policeman, Javier further explained, a journalist’s information should pressure the judges and police into taking action and delivering timely justice.
Javier said there are two components of a news: how big it is in terms of receiving feedback and what changes it cause. But journalists in general remain more focused at the former, forgetting the latter aspect. In the meanwhile, they themselves become victim of reporting causing a hell of change in their family’s life.
(The News International)
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