| | |  Editorials | Issues | December 2008 
Prosecutor: Mexico Not so Dangerous for Reporters
 Olga R. Rodriguez - Associated Press
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| | Mexico prosecutor says only 3 reporters killed for work, disputes watchdog's tally. | |
Mexico City - Only three of 25 reporters who died violently in the last two years in Mexico were killed because of their work, the country's special prosecutor for crimes against journalists said Tuesday.
Octavio Orellana said most of the reporters who died were bystanders in attacks against other people, were killed in accidents or committed suicide. He said several victims who worked with media outlets were not reporters.
The motives behind most reporters' deaths "are similar to what affects the rest of Mexicans," Orellana added, referring to sharply increased murder rates across the country.
Media groups say Mexico - which is experiencing a wave of drug cartel-related violence - is the deadliest place in the Americas to report and one of the world's most dangerous. But Orellana said that perception is based on erroneous information.
"Some organizations include in their statistics an important number of cases where it was proven that those attacked were not journalists, or where the attack had no relation to their profession," Orellana said.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 24 reporters have been killed since 2000, and seven have vanished in the last three years.
The committee's Americas chief, Carlos Lauria, said in response to Orellana's comments that the group's tally only includes working journalists.
"Anyone could associate this number with a conflict zone, not with a democratic country," Lauria said.
Of the 24 killings, the committee says, only one has been solved.
The committe and special prosecutor have different death tallies.
"Impunity generates fear, and fear leads people to self-censorship," Lauria said. "This is a truly dire situation."
Orellana said the three journalists his office believes were killed because of their work include Saul Martinez, an editor at the Interdiario de Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas, Arizona, who was abducted while investigating the disappearance of a police informant.
A second - Alejandro Zenon, a radio journalist in the southern state of Tabasco - was shot to death while hanging banners against kidnappings.
Most recently, Armando Rodriguez, a veteran crime reporter for the newspaper El Diario, was killed Nov. 13 outside his home in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. |
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