Silencing Mexico

Abstract

During President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s administration, the military was called on to confront organized crime, and dozens of journalists were killed in Mexico. Attacks on journalists have continued under the new administration. This study focuses on the erosion of the democratic institution of the press in Mexico’s northern states, for the majority of journalists murdered in the last decade worked in that region. Utilizing Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, this study examines pressures constraining the press working in a tide of violence. The thirty-nine semistructured, in-depth interviews with Mexican journalists, who report in five of the northern states, indicate the strongest influences came from outside newsrooms, where intimidation and unthinkable crimes were committed against the press along the entire border. Individual-level influences, such as lack of conflict-reporting training, safety concerns, and handling the trauma of covering violence, were among the strongest pressures often leading to self-censorship. Organizational-level influences, including newsroom policies and financial arrangements with government and business, also influenced journalistic practice. The study added an inter-media level for analyses of news organizations and individual journalists working together to increase safety. Additional findings show major disruptions in border reporting where news “blackouts” exist amid pockets of lawlessness.

Professionalism Under Threat of Violence

“…The shifting violence has been attributed to the nature of warring organized crime groups as well as the government's response to organized crime and PROFESSIONALISM UNDER THREAT OF VIOLENCE violence (Molzahn, Rodriguez, and Shirk 2013). These ebbs and tides of violence sweeping the north have resulted in shifting practical responses and changing safety concerns (Relly and González de Bustamante 2014). Given the fluid situation, the study aimed to seek how journalists in various parts of the north reflected on the concept of professionalism.…”

“…Few would dispute that journalism training is critical in zones of conflict (Relly and González de Bustamante 2014;Carter and Kodrich 2013;Fahmy and Johnson 2005;Kim 2010;Kim and Hama-Saeed 2008), though the literature is mixed on the importance of a formal journalism education as it relates to levels of professionalism (Adam 2001;Dates 2006). Though the first school of journalism in Mexico, Carlos Septién, was opened in 1949 and two years later a bachelor's program in journalism was founded at the National Autonomous University followed by the University of Veracruz's journalism school three years later, there was a movement by the 1960s to change the curricula to degrees in more heterogeneous areas, such as communication studies (Hernández Ramírez and Schwarz 2008).…”

Periodistas de televisiones públicas vs. privadas: influencias percibidas y confianza en las instituciones políticas en España

“…A pesar de todo, en los últimos años la investigación académica empírica acerca de la estructura multinivel de influencias en el trabajo periodístico ha producido avances significativos (Berganza, Arcila-Calderón & Herrero-Jiménez, 2016;Hanitzsch et al, 2010;Hanitzsch;Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014), aunque ninguno de estos análisis pone su acento principal en el medio televisivo. El tipo de medio de comunicación es, según la bibliografía científica, una de las características que afectan a la autonomía del periodista (Skovsgaard, 2014;Weaver et al, 2007).…”

Double-edged knife: practices and perceptions of technology and digital security among Mexican journalists in violent contexts

“…The situation has attracted increased attention from scholars. For at least a decade, numerous international and national researchers have been studying this complex phenomenon (see for instance Rodelo 2009;Estévez 2010;Schneider 2011;Relly and González 2014;Del Palacio 2015;Reyna 2015;. Adopting different theoretical and methodological approaches, they have discussed a wide range of topics related to anti-press violence, such as the formation of journalists' collectives in response to violence (De León Vázquez 2018), the psychological impact of covering organized crime and/or government corruption (Flores, Reyes, and Reidl 2014), the erosion of professional norms (González de Bustamante and Relly 2016), the agendasetting capacity of drug lords (González 2018), and how an increasing lack of trust in reporters by society has affected journalists' willingness to practice their profession (González and Reyna 2019).…”