Social Media Increasingly Used to Threaten Female Journalists in Mexico Mark Browne - CNSNews.com
go to original May 14, 2016

Mexico: Aggressions Against Journalists Increased More Than 21% in 2015 (teleSUR English)

Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being used to threaten female journalists in Mexico, where authorities “aren’t interested” in investigating the growing digital menace to freedom of expression, according to local and international human rights groups.

Article 19, a British human rights organization, reports that nearly half of 69 attacks on the press documented by activists in Mexico between January and March this year have been linked to public officials.

The possibility that individuals will be prosecuted for making threats using social media is “very small,” said Pilar Tavera of the pro-democracy group Propuesta Civica.

The majority of threats made to female journalists are now made on Facebook, Twitter or email, with Facebook being the most favored method, said Faviola Gonzalez of the watchdog group CIMAC, which works to protect female journalists’ human rights in Mexico.

Gonzalez has been monitoring social media threats to women journalists in Mexico since 2000 and says attacks against them increased by 2,200 percent between 2002 and 2013, with 13 female journalists killed between 2002 and 2015.

Threats over social media are often committed by individuals who create accounts on Facebook or Twitter “solely for the purpose of attacking journalists,” she said.

Read the rest at CNSNews.com

Related: Mexican Newspaper Vanguardia and Its Staff Face Harassment (Committee to Protect Journalists)

Related: Another Journalist Killed in Veracruz (El Universal)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!