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 Editorials | At Issue | May 2005 
Mexican Press Losing Its Voices Of Freedom
 San Antonio Express-News
| | Fox must be held to his word — by journalists, politicians and citizens on both sides of the border. |
Driven by deadlines, journalism is a stressful profession, each tick of the clock an assault on the psyches of reporters, editors and photographers.
In Mexico, however, the deadlines are the easy part.
In a country torn by violence and corruption, journalists are prime targets, and so is the concept they work so nobly to uphold — freedom of the press.
The drug cartels have a common enemy — news people who expose their evil.
Two muckraking journalists were gunned down last month, one slain, the other in critical condition after getting shot nine times when she left her television station in Nuevo Laredo.
A third, Alfredo Jimenez Mota, has been missing since April 2, and colleagues fear he has been murdered.
Mota, 25, exposed the plots of drug traffickers for the newspaper El Imparcial in northern Sonora.
American journalists reported his disappearance to the Inter-American Press Association, a move that reflected their concern for the fate of a colleague.
But they were also motivated by a larger issue — press freedom, which affects citizens on both sides of the border.
"This is torture not being able to talk to him or find him," José Alfredo Jimenez, his father, recently told the Los Angeles Times.
President Vicente Fox met with the elder Mota, promising the help of federal investigators to search for his son.
"There has to be justice, and ... I offer all my support," Fox told the father, according to the Associated Press.
Fox must be held to his word — by journalists, politicians and citizens on both sides of the border.
When journalists die in drug wars, powerful voices die with them.
The corruption does not exist in a vacuum; it thrives more readily when the press is not free to perform its watchdog function.
In talks and summits with Mexican officials, their U.S. counterparts must discuss press freedom with the same zeal and passion they devote to issues such as trade and immigration.
The border has seen the alternative too many times — the loss of brave and lonely voices. |
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