MEX Reporter Calls on US Journalists to Investigate Trafficking Networks North of Border Alejandro Martínez - Knight Center for Journalism
go to original June 26, 2013

Marcela Turati, a reporter from the Mexican magazine Proceso, was the keynote speaker at the Investigative Reporters & Editors 2013 conference. (Travis Hartman)

Why did acclaimed Mexican journalist Marcela Turati tell the story of death and threats against her colleagues during a ceremony recognizing the very best of investigative journalism in the U.S.?

Because the problem of corruption and drug trafficking in Mexico does not stop at the border, she said, and U.S. journalists must own the story as well.

During her June 22 keynote speech at Investigative Reporters and Editors’ 34th conference in San Antonio, Texas, Turati, an investigative reporter at Mexican news magazine Proceso and co-founder of journalism organization Periodistas de a Pie, described the situation of the press south of the border, where dozens of journalists have been killed in the last 10 years.

There, criminals have infiltrated newsrooms. Journalists who inconvenience drug traffickers are kidnapped and tortured. Turati said a Mexican journalist once asked colleagues for a gun, not for protection, but to kill himself in case they came for him.

Many journalists in Mexico still risk their lives to tell these stories but silence is spreading, she said, and many places in Mexico have been sucked into an information vacuum.

Read the rest at Knight Center for Journalism

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