Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.
Per the AP:
The biggest newspaper in Mexico’s most violent city will restrict drug war coverage after the killing of its second journalist in less than two years, just as international press representatives will urge the government to make security for journalists a national priority.
In a front-page editorial Sunday, El Diario de Juarez asked drug cartels warring in this city across from El Paso, Texas, to say what they want from the newspaper, so it can continue its work without further death, injury or intimidation of its staff.
…Many media outlets, especially in border areas, have stopped covering the drug war. Until Sunday, El Diario was not one of them.
“Even in one of the places where violence is worst … El Diario was still doing a lot of good reporting on crime,” said Carlos Lauria, a [Committee to Protect Journalists] senior coordinator. “The fact that they’re giving up is really bad. It’s an indication that the situation is out of control.”
From El Diario’s editorial:
We do not want more deaths. We do not want more injuries or even more intimidation. It is impossible to exercise our role in these conditions. Tell us therefore, what [the drug cartels] expect of us as a medium.
This is not a surrender…
And, from the El Paso Times’s report on the killing last week that prompted Sunday’s editorial:
A photography intern of Juárez’s largest daily newspaper was killed and another intern injured in an attack Thursday afternoon outside a busy mall.
Still wearing press badges and with their equipment handy, Luis Carlos Santiago, 21, and fellow intern Carlos Manuel Sánchez had just learned camera tricks at a workshop. They were about to get a bite to eat.
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
