Mexico Is the Second Most Unsafe Country for Journalists Infobae
go to original June 18, 2022

Family and colleagues bid farewell to journalist Luis Enrique Ramirez, who was murdered in May 2022. (Cruz Serrano/AFP)

A safe environment for journalists should allow those who practice this profession to generate, collect and disseminate information, in accordance with the methodologies and ethics of the work, without running the risk of suffering physical, psychological, emotional or professional harm. This was stated by the organization Reporters Without Borders in its World Press Freedom Index. According to this classification, this environment does not exist in Mexico.

The country governed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador occupies the 179th place in the list of 180 countries classified according to the security environment for journalism professionals, placed only above Burma, a Southeast Asian country that is currently experiencing a strong civil conflict derived from a coup d'état.

At the bottom of this ranking, in addition to Mexico and Burma, are Eritrea, Yemen, North Korea, Syria, Iran, China, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), this evaluation was carried out based on quantitative analysis, by counting the number of attacks committed against journalists, and qualitative analysis, through interviews with specialists in journalism and in the defense of human rights.

The questions used to carry out the research by RSF sought to investigate the occurrence of attacks, threats and damages to journalists in the last year. One of the questions shared by the organization was "Have journalists been murdered in the last 12 months?"

At this point it is worth remembering that, from January to June 2022 alone, 11 murders of journalists have been recorded in Mexico, of which three have occurred in Veracruz (José Luis Gamboa Arenas, Sheila Johana García Olivera and Yesenia Mollinedo Falconi), two in Michoacán (Roberto Toledo and Armando Linares) and two more in Baja California (Margarito Martínez Esquivel and Lourdes Maldonado). It should be noted that all three states are governed by the National Regeneration Movement (Morena).

In addition to the category of safety, Reporters Without Borders considered four other indicators to evaluate the situation of the countries and determine their rating in terms of press freedom: political context, legal framework, economic context and socio-cultural context. Although Mexico's evaluation in terms of safety for journalists is the lowest of the five indicators, none of them reflects a truly favorable scenario.

Read the rest at Infobae.com

This article was translated from Spanish using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.

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