The largest newspaper in Mexico’s most violent city has decided to restrict its coverage of the ongoing drugs war after one of its photographers was shot dead.
In an editorial printed on the front page of Sunday’s edition, El Diario newspaper, in Ciudad Juárez, asked “What do you want of us?” Directed at the drug cartels, the editorial said: “We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect.” The newspaper insisted the editorial was not a “surrender”, but that it did “not want more deaths. We do not want more injured or more intimidation. It is impossible to carry out our role in these conditions. Tell us therefore, what is expected of us.”
The editorial came after the shooting of two of the newspaper’s photographers – one of them an intern - on Thursday afternoon, according to the BBC. Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, 21, and Carlos Manuel Sanchez Colunga, 18, had just left a photography workshop when they were fired upon. Santiago died of his injuries.
Santiago is the second journalist at the paper to be killed in two years, following the death of José Armando Rodríguez Carreón, 40, who was shot to death outside his home in November 2008. So far 30 journalists have died in Mexico since the beginning of the government’s clampdown on the drug cartels in December 2006, according to IPI’s Death Watch. The newspaper had been renowned for its ongoing investigative crime reporting in the region, which has been wracked with violence.
Speaking to the BBC’s World Service, El Diario’s editor Herardo Rodríguez expressed anger at the lack of progress in the official investigation into Rodríguez Carreón’s death and criticised the government as well as the cartels.
“We have repeatedly called on the authorities to investigate and prosecute the murderers of journalists in Mexico in an effort to avoid exactly this situation. Journalists should not be so afraid for their lives that they stop reporting on the biggest story in the country,” said International Press Institute Acting Director Alison Bethel McKenzie. “The violence journalists face in Mexico, from shootings to car bombs to kidnappings, is have a dangerously chilling effect on press freedom in the country.”
