Mexican journalists debate cartels, self-censorship
<p>The entrance of El Noroeste newspaper is covered with bullet holes after unidentified gunmen opened fire on the newspaper's offices in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan, Mexico, on Sept. 1. According to el Noroeste, the attack came hours after anonymous calls were made to the newspaper by a group that identified itself as "La Linea," or The Line, demanding that the daily publish stories related to the illegal activities of the Sinaloa drug cartel.</p>
MEXICO CITY (AP) - The threats, four or five of them, came to reporters at Imagen, a daily newspaper in the once-quiet state of Zacatecas where drug cartels have taken over in just the last few years. Then editor Patricia Mercado got a phone call ordering her to print a prepared article or she would be kidnapped.
Mercado ran the story - verbatim - of an innocent young man killed by the army, which was committing human rights abuse.
"If it's a question of life or death, I have no trouble making a decision. The lives of my reporters are most important," she said, after telling a group of Mexican journalists Thursday that traffickers from the Zetas cartel have "almost become the news editors."
Her colleagues from across the country told similar stories of attacks, intimidation and self-censorship in a rare public debate days after El Diario de Juarez wrote a stunning editorial calling drug cartels the de facto authorities in Ciudad Juarez and saying, "Tell us what you want."
President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday he would push legal reforms to protect journalists and create a security plan after he met with the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Inter American Press Association, which sponsored Thursday's conference.
At the same time, the Attorney General's Office announced the first lead in the 2008 killing of El Diario crime reporter Armando Rodriguez, saying soldiers had detained a suspect who described how Rodriguez was killed and said the journalist was targeted because of his work.
El Diario editor Pedro Torres, who ran the provocative editorial after a second of his journalists, 21-year-old photographer Luis Carlos Santiago, was killed last week, said he was skeptical about the arrest, given its timing.
"Every time there is pressure ... they find an escape valve. They present someone, an important arrest," Torres told The Associated Press. In two years, he has yet to be interviewed about Rodriguez's death. "It's very hard to believe in an investigation that is carried out this way," Torres said.
El Diario's editorial dominated the public discourse all week in a country the U.N. called the most dangerous place for journalists in the Americas. Sixty-five news workers have been slain since 2000, Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights has said.
More than 90 percent of the cases have gone unsolved, according to the CPJ.
"For me the most eloquent part of the editorial was the 'de facto authorities,'" said Javier Garza, deputy editorial director of El Siglo de Torreon in the northern state of Coahuila, whose offices were shot up in 2009. "Why would we believe Calderon? ... The legitimate authorities have done nothing."
Investigators believe Rodriguez was killed "for writing a lot of stories against one of the criminal organizations fighting for territorial control" in Ciudad Juarez, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.
It did not specify the criminal organization. The Juarez and Sinaloa cartels have been battling there since 2008.