With this work, I intend, in broad strokes, to explain the evolution that journalism has had in Mexico, and specifically the problems and situations that Mexican journalists must face in the war against drug trafficking.
The conditions in which journalists who cover the war on drugs live are particularly complicated, and not only because of the violence they must experience on a daily basis, but also because of their work and financial situation, as well as the physical and psychological effects of daily violence. and the climate of threats and attacks - including the murder of some of his colleagues - in which they must operate.
Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, as a consequence, it has begun to suggest not signing the notes with the real names, but using pseudonyms, and creating an association of freedom of the press and expression that acts as a pressure organism.
Fortunately, journalism is a task that is constantly reviewed and updated every day. The future has a much more important effect on the press than on anything else. For this reason, the journalist reinvents himself, modifies his behavior and revalues his legacy day by day. If it were not so, it would be part of the already long list of things that disappeared by not resisting the passing of time.
Introduction
Being a journalist has great benefits, having the ability to inform and at the same time influencing the thinking of society, gives them a high responsibility that involves expressing themselves freely and that their ideas and concepts can be picked up by a large number of people.
In Mexico, more and more people are using social networks to report (and find out) about the war on drugs and "disseminate information about shootings, arrests and clashes between the cartels and the police."
This is especially the case in what is known as “zones of silence” in Mexico, where the media have renounced - sometimes publicly - to report on the daily violent acts related to drug trafficking. By filling that gap, bloggers and Facebook and Twitter account managers have become targets of not only the cartels, but the authorities themselves.
Background of journalism in Mexico
Today the mass media play a very important role in society. A means of communication that has been present in history is writing, in its form of newspaper, this medium of information has played a very important role in many events in the country. The newspapers have been very powerful weapons to disseminate and report on the ideas, thoughts, ideologies and events that occur day by day in society, thanks to these you can have a memory of the time of a country, talking about its social life, politics and others, in them you can see all versions of a story. The importance of the written press has been and I consider that I continue to be very important in the life of a country.
Journalism as such has existed in our country for a very long time, since 1524, when the town criers went through the streets, public squares and well-attended places, shouting with all their voices the most important events at that time, the new guidelines approved by the government Colonial, prohibiting or approving certain activities that were considered adequate or harmful to preserve order in the Spanish empire.
Later the printing press arrived in our country, in 1539, when the Italian printer Juan Pablo arrived in New Spain, with the aim of reproducing, among other manuscripts, decrees given by the court of the Holy Inquisition, ordinances of the King and from the Spanish authorities, and the duplication of copies of the Holy Bible. This caused the printing workshops to increase gradually in various parts of the country, thus starting the circulation of the flying sheets.
In the information presented in these sheets, allusion was made to mythological issues, as everything was controlled by religion at that time, so if a disaster occurred, it was because man had committed some sin and in this way God was punishing him. An example of this was recorded in 1541, when it was published about the earthquake that occurred in Guatemala.
La Gaceta de México, was considered the first newspaper in Mexico, created in 1722. This would publish religious, official, commercial, social, mining and maritime information. This monthly organ lasted from January to June of that year.
During the Viceroyalty, publications would be published irregularly and in small editions destined for the elite of New Spanish society. Newspapers and flyers began to have practical use: everything from important events to essays on any subject could be found on their pages. In the colonies, the newspaper became popular because it was adapted to the lives of busy men in need of information, information that they had in a practical and simple way, because the subjects were treated with words that were easy to understand.
However, when the Independence movement began, the printing press acquired a relevant importance, since the printed word during this period would serve as a means of communication of the new ideological currents, ceasing to be a merely informative means to fulfill a political-social function..
The practice of journalism was efficient in spreading the independence ideas and through them, expressing opposition to the government among the select groups of readers that grew in number, as illiteracy rates throughout the country were being lowered, despite that the production of newspapers was not considered as an activity that represented considerable economic income.
The press also played a relevant role during the French invasion (1862-1867). The imperial government's response to opposition journalists was drastic and violent on many occasions. Among the republican side identified with the Juarista cause, Francisco Zarco with La Independencia Mexicana, Guillermo Prieto in Monterrey with El Cura de Tamajón and El Monarca in San Luis Potosí, and Ignacio Ramírez who published La Opinión in Sinaloa and La Insurrección in Sonora participated. The liberal journalists, in addition to having to hide and be forced to emigrate constantly when they were persecuted by the empire, were fought by characters related to the monarchical government of Maximiliano in the publications El Boletín de Orizaba, El Verdadero Eco de Europa, La Opinion, La Reacción and El Veracruzano, in addition to La Prensa and El Pájaro Verde,these last two were published in the capital. As Cuauhtémoc Morgan mentions "… at this time the attack, the insult, disqualification and denotation by either side, were the backbone of the journalistic content." (Morgan, 2010)
Journalism in the Porfiriato
During the government of Porfirio Díaz there was a press-power relationship, stressing once again that journalism was the perfect medium to express ideas, political positions and proselytize. But although at first his mandate began by trying to keep a harmony with many newspapers, later all this was degraded. Many of the newspapers were closed and many of their editors were banished from the country. Although they continued to publish clandestinely and trying to get the publications to reach the country.
Esteban Ortiz makes a mention about the press in the Porfirian government: “In this government period there were two types of press: vigilante and combative. The newspaper was a scene of discussion for liberals and conservatives. The press subsidy was a weapon to end the opposition press, it was promoted by Juárez and Lerdo, who also established laws for freedom of expression, but without discrediting the regime. ” (Ortiz, 2010)
Journalism in the Contemporary Era
“Regeneración”, founded by the brothers Jesús and Ricardo Flores Magón in August 1900, was conceived as an ideological, political and organic newspaper of a revolutionary mass movement, it was the diffuser of an extremely radical ideology, which not only had problems with the regime porfirista, but also with later revolutionary governments like those of Francisco I. Madero and Venustiano Carranza, who always distrusted the anarchist ideas of these brothers. This daily life lasted until March 1918.
The impartial, founded in 1896 with the support of Porfirio Díaz, modeled the American newspapers, applying his definition of the news correspondents, sections and news services of the Associated Press (AP) agency. Achieving with this to attract a greater number of readers and achieving a circulation of up to one hundred thousand copies.
This newspaper, which frequently included photographs on its front page, disappeared in 1914. It is the starting point for modern and business journalism in Mexico, as it was the first to incorporate a well-organized plant of reporters and production equipment into its structure, where, in addition, The efficient work of an advertising department transformed the concept of space commercialization known until then.
According to Morgan, “After the closure of El Imparcial, on October 1, 1916, the constitutionalist Félix F. Palavicini founded El Universal and on March 18, 1917 Rafael Alducín did the same with Excelsior, prominent capital newspapers that still exist today. " (Morgan, 2010)
Background to drug trafficking in Mexico
When talking about the world of drugs, the media often put Mexico as a copy of the Colombian drug traffic, leaving aside, among other things, that drug trafficking in Mexico began some sixty years before the Colombians, It has an important part of the American drug market and the historical and structural relationship of the subordination of drug traffickers to the political power observed in Mexico and in the United States.
Drug trafficking is an illicit activity that began to develop from distant times, when England moved opium to China in the 19th century, which caused the economy to be affected and social problems to arise in this Asian country (which led to the well-known “War of the Opium"). This activity consists of the production, sale and transfer of narcotics from one place to another. Over time this activity has undergone processes of transformation and sophistication, causing socio-political and economic problems in Mexico.
It is difficult to provide an exact date that indicates the beginning of drug trafficking in Mexico, however, it is known that during the "Porfiriato", opium was produced in the country and on some occasions it was imported from Asia to be refined and later shipped to the United.
Journalism vs. drug trafficking
On August 24, 2006, the PGR of Quintana Roo begins the AP / PGR / QRO / CAN / 446/2006-V for the crime of violation of the Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives, for attacks with fragmentation grenades in the newspapers Por Esto! and Quequi Quintana Roo, in Cancún. The two fragmentation grenades were thrown from the front fence of the Por Esto newspaper into the parking lot and one fell just under the front door and the other exploded on the terrace steps, as splinters scattered and broke some lamps. and they damaged vehicles around. These attacks were carried out by the criminal group Los Zetas, because previous days these newspapers had been publishing “periodic reports” on the deaths of seven judicial officers who left them dead on the road to Mérida,event linked to this band. This fact is one of the many samples of how organized crime or cartels have tried to censor and silence the media.
The power of the drug trafficker has spread in recent years like cancer to regions that it did not touch before, reaching today more than half of the country. In their advance from city to city, the cartels were creating black holes of information on the map, forcing journalists in each plaza to silence.
One of the darkest passages in journalism in Mexico is the murder of Manuel Buendía. This journalist had his column called The column of Buendía Red Privada was published by the Excelsior newspaper in Mexico City and was reproduced by around 60 Mexican newspapers. With this, he was the most influential journalist in the panorama of the written press in Mexico, in the second half of the 20th century. Buendía was conducting an investigation into the collision between Manuel Bartlett Díaz, Secretary of the Interior, Miguel Aldana Ibarra, Director of the Anti-Drug Program (Federal Judicial Police) and Manuel Ibarra Herrera, Federal Director of Security, who act in agreement with drug traffickers.
The author Anabel Hernández, in her book "Los Señores del Narco", reviews in this regard that:
"Manuel Buendía had also allegedly managed to collect data on the CIA's arms smuggling activities, and the relationship the intelligence agency had with famed drug traffickers in Veracruz. Buendía contacted José Antonio Zorrilla Pérez, head of the DFS, and reported all the information he had. The journalist was seeking advice on how to proceed, but received death in return. José Zorrilla told Buendía that the situation of drug trafficking linked to the CIA was very delicate, and warned him that it was better not to talk about the matter. The police chief dispatched a group of DFS agents who apparently had a mission to provide security for the Excelsior columnist and his family. However, Manuel Buendía was assassinated by members of the DFS 41 days later. One hour later,Velasco - Buendía's main source of information on the US agency - was also killed in Veracruz. The death would have been "approved" by orders of Bartlett Díaz, "then Secretary of Education, it is stated in the DEA report. Naturally, the DFS took control of the investigations into the Buendía murder: just 13 minutes after the execution, Zorrilla arrived at the crime scene and altered the evidence. ” (Hernández, 2013).Zorrilla arrived at the crime scene and altered the evidence. " (Hernández, 2013).Zorrilla arrived at the crime scene and altered the evidence. " (Hernández, 2013).
Since 1989, José Antonio Zorrilla Martínez, director of the Federal Security Directorate, Mexico's legendary political police, has been in prison. Zorrilla Martínez was the highest-ranking government official led by Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (1982-1988) to pay for the murder of the influential journalist. For the Mexican journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio "… Zorrilla Martínez was the scapegoat for a state crime." (Palacio, 2007). I agree with the author, since from the outset the media in Mexico are not objective since they are pressured by external factors to make their information known, this type of situation makes them lose the objectivity of their news. To publicize the news, the media will always be influenced by the ideas and interests of third parties,And the public that seeks information through them is always looking for the truth, the news as it is, so that it is he who formulates his own criteria based on the facts, but unfortunately reality is not like that.
There is a lot of external influence to the medium that will always prevent the news from leaving as it happened, that is why the client does not have many options: either read, listen to or watch the news knowing that they are already manipulated to the convenience of the medium and tinged with ideologies, where you will have to try to distinguish between the real and the uncertain and stay with the basis of what really happened or simply let yourself be carried away by the means that are most in line with your own ideas.
"Zones of Silence"
The war on drug trafficking is causing journalists to fall into self-censorship so as not to be compromised and to protect their lives. Reporters choose to no longer put their names on investigative notes and summarize it under "From the newsroom." Journalists try to go outside with bulletproof vests as a common garment. Some stop publishing, others publish half, the information they manage to obtain is published by twenty or thirty percent and the rest put it aside, either because it is dangerous or because it cannot be verified. Other times the stories are very good, but when analyzing the consequences that they can bring, many journalists go back and choose to look for another type of story.
From Matamoros to Pachuca, from Ciudad Juárez to Sinaloa, the information that is published about the drug war does not usually depend on the editor in charge. Many times, it is defined in a pact - verbal or tacit - reached at gunpoint between the media of some states and the drug trafficking organizations that dominate the area. Those blackouts have prevented Mexico from seeing the warning signs that mark the advance of the epidemic. (MEPI, 2010)
But the problem is not exclusive to Matamoros. Today, in almost all regions of the country, the number of newspaper articles mentioning cartel violence is only a small fraction of the number of executions that occur each month in each entity. It is not possible to know how many additional acts of violence, such as kidnappings and murders, occur in parallel for account adjustments after an execution, but the number is estimated to be considerable. Much of this violence does not appear in the media.
During the first six months of the year, MEPI monitored the following newspapers: El Noroeste (Culiacán), Norte (Ciudad Juárez), El Norte (Monterrey), El Dictamen (Veracruz), Mural (Guadalajara), Pulso (San Luis Potosí), El Tomorrow (Nuevo Laredo), El Diario de Morelos y Milenio (national edition and Hidalgo). The analysis compiled all the articles that mentioned keywords to talk about drug violence: "drug trafficking", "armed command", "goat horn", etc. It was not possible to compare these results with official crime statistics, since the few that exist contradict each other, but MEPI contrasted the total number of articles published with the number of those executed in each city. This comparison allows us to see how much the press is silent in each of the cities that suffer the most from drug violence in Mexico. (MEPI, 2010)
These different areas mentioned are not the only ones where there is no freedom of the press. "Zones of silence" are called in Mexico. And they extend to all regions of the country.
The Mexico Media Observatory published a report in which it assures that the news coverage of violence in national (not state) media decreased by at least half between last December and February (compared to the same period a year ago). This is attributed to a government strategy.
According to a news on the website of the international chain BBC, "The word 'murders' decreased its presence on the front pages of the DF press by 50%, while the use of the words' organized crime' and 'drug trafficking 'it was reduced on the covers by 50.2% and 54.6%, respectively. In the case of open television newscasts, the presence of the words "organized crime" and "drug trafficking" dropped by 70.2% and 44.2%, respectively. On pay television, the same words stopped being spoken by 65% and 41%, during the period analyzed, ”it was indicated. (Salazar, 2013)
But all this is just another communication strategy of the federal government itself to make violence invisible.
Mónica Medel, author of the writing "Journalism in times of threat, censorship and violence" points out in this regard that:
The press coverage of the increasingly violent drug phenomenon in Mexico faces multiple challenges, which affect the type of stories that are written about it, as well as its quality. Reasons that have nothing to do with journalistic criteria inform decisions about what is covered, how it is covered, what priority is assigned, how much space is given and even on what page it is published. Veiled pressures and direct threats from criminal groups or even from government apparatuses are replacing the traditional criteria of publishers to decide what is news and what will be its treatment. Journalistic agendas are being largely determined by what can be done in a setting where information and access to sources are lacking, on the one hand,and there are self-imposed informational restrictions to protect journalists and partly reduce the risks to which they are exposed by telling the story, on the other. Not knowing who to trust, as a result of constant complaints about authorities colluded with the 'narco' (which have been adding up since the origins of the Mexican drug cartels in the 1920s), is another variable that affects this environment. restrictive. (Medel, 2010)
Journalistic Ethics before Drug Trafficking
The social function of journalism is that journalists exercise freedom of expression and the right of access to information in the name of public opinion - of society - which implies a moral and political responsibility, regulated by a code of ethics professional.
The concept of ethics tells us that ethical problems are characterized by their generality, which distinguishes them from the moral problems of daily life, which present us with specific situations.
Ethics is theory, investigation or explanation of a type of human experience or form of behavior of men and studies a form of conduct that they consider valuable and, in addition, obligatory and due.
The reality is that the journalist's ethical ideal is to reach the truth about a newsworthy event and communicate it, and in this case also, interpret it, expose it and express a responsible opinion.
Freedom of expression does not mean expressing without rhyme or reason, it is a right full of responsibilities and swampy traps along the way. Denisse Flores says well, “In order for the journalist to be able to fully and freely fulfill his mission of service, it is necessary for him to be fully trained in the knowledge of information sciences and techniques, in universal culture and in the theory and practice of ethics; it requires a solid intellectual and moral training. ” (Flowers)
Conclusions
I think that faced with these dilemmas, journalists and the media should bet on explanatory journalism and the promotion of human rights. It is true, publishing certain types of news carries a certain danger, but the people who are going to dedicate themselves to it, must be very intelligent and be able to give quality information, without the need to put their lives or their lives at risk. relatives.
References
- Flores, D. (sf). Ethical journalism, is it possible? Obtained from Hernández, A. (2013). The Lords of Narco. Grijalbo.Medel, M. (March 26, 2010). Journalism in times of threat, censorship and violence.MEPI, F. (November 17, 2010). http://www.fundacionmepi.org/. Obtained from http://www.fundacionmepi.org/Morgan, C. (2010). http://historiaperiodismo.tripod.com. Obtained from http://historiaperiodismo.tripod.com/id3.html Ortiz, E. (September 2010). http://comunicaretaller5020.blogspot.mx. Obtained from El Periodismo: http://comunicaretaller5020.blogspot.mx/2011/03/prensa-en-el-porfiriato.htmlPalacio, R. (May 30, 2007). The universal. Obtained from http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/columnas/65423.htmlSalazar, J. (April 22, 2013). BBC. Obtained from
