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…Forced silence is generally a consequence of this formula: army or cartels that control the information, corrupt or weak governments that surrender to them, and a judicial system that doesn’t work.
We soon realized that something was rotten in the country when the reporters who were supposed to file the news became themselves the news; when saying that (after Iraq), Mexico was the most dangerous place for journalists in the world became commonplace, and nobody cared.
Those deaths were registered in small news stories, like these, that I collected from the newspapers: The journalist was kidnapped in the morning by five unknown men just in front of the municipal police department…His eight year-old daughter watched the execution. He was killed when he was taking her to school…Three months before his murder, his house had been shot and his car burned…He was taken by eight masked men dressed in black, from his home, in front of his wife and daughters…By the corpse a message was found: “This happened to me for writing what I shouldn’t. Be careful with your text when you write the news.
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Mexican journalist Marcela Turati speaking about the abuses and dangers the press faces in Mexico during her acceptance of the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism earlier this month. Full video of her speech available here. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
