{"id":101518,"date":"2020-11-14T15:32:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T07:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=101518"},"modified":"2020-11-14T15:32:08","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T07:32:08","slug":"violence-against-journalists-in-mexico-adds-another-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=101518","title":{"rendered":"Violence against journalists in Mexico adds another victim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Mexican<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MEXICO CITY, Nov 14 (NNN-TELESUR) — Early Monday morning, Israel V\u00e1zquez, a crime reporter in the Mexican city of Salamanca, was gunned down after receiving a tip that led him to a plastic bag full of human remains left on a side street, an apparent plot to lure him to the scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon upon arriving, as he prepared to broadcast live on Facebook, shooters opened fire on him from a passing vehicle. He died a few hours later from his injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was the third Mexican journalist to be murdered in less than two weeks \u2013 and the eighth this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two recent examples of the violence inflicted upon journalists are Jes\u00fas Alfonso Pi\u00f1uelas, founder of two media outlets in Sonora state, who was shot dead on Nov 2, and\u00a0Arturo Alba Medina, a TV host in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, shot on Oct 29 while driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou want to kill a journalist, you can do it without much of a chance that you\u2019ll be caught,\u201d said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of the press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In at least five cases, the journalists\u2019 murders were directly related to their work, Hootsen said. It remains unclear if Pi\u00f1uelas and Alba\u2019s deaths were linked to their journalism, but such cases are seldom investigated with any rigor, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The string of killings has cemented Mexico\u2019s place as one of the world\u2019s deadliest countries for members of the press and underscored the risks facing journalists who cover sensitive subjects such as crime, politics, and the security forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, Mexico suffered the second-highest number of killings after war-torn Syria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was a person who was very careful with his broadcasts,\u201d said Ver\u00f3nica Espinosa, Guanajuato correspondent for the newsweekly Proceso. \u201cHe didn\u2019t give sensitive details\u201d in his reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guanajuato, which surrounds Salamanca, has seen soaring violence as rival crime groups jockey for drug trafficking routes, extortion rackets, and control of the lucrative market in stolen gasoline. Journalists in the state routinely take extra security precautions, said Espinosa: working in teams, publishing without bylines, and omitting potentially sensitive details from their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official response to such crimes has often been half-hearted. When reporters in Salamanca demanded a meeting with the local mayor, Betty Hern\u00e1ndez, they were stunned after V\u00e1zquez\u2019s murder when she appeared to blame him for his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe truth is, look, going at six or five in the morning to cover a story in that place, which everyone knows is dangerous,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said in a video of the meeting. \u201cBut we\u2019re journalists!\u201d one person can be heard responding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Espinosa said the mayor\u2019s response was \u201cabsurd\u201d but typical of how Mexican officials often imply that victims like V\u00e1squez are to blame for their own deaths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt criminalizes him and makes him responsible for security conditions that are not the responsibility of a citizen, much less a journalist,\u201d she said. — NNN-TELESUR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEXICO CITY, Nov 14 (NNN-TELESUR) — Early Monday morning, Israel V\u00e1zquez, a crime reporter in the Mexican city of Salamanca, was gunned down after receiving a tip that led him to a plastic bag full of human remains left on a side street, an apparent plot to lure him to the scene. Soon upon arriving, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":101519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101518"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/101519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}