In Violence-Riddled Mexico, Social Media Is King

MURDERED: Mexican journalists protest against violence toward journalists in Mexico placing on the ground pictures of murdered journalists, on Aug. 7, in Mexico City. (Ronaldo Schemidt/Getty Images )

Drug trafficking violence in Mexico rose 110 percent between 2007 and 2008, with a death toll reaching 5,600, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The death toll nearly doubled in 2009, soaring to 9,635 that year, alone, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Amid the violence, journalists have become a target of both the cartels and corrupt officials. Since 2000, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recorded 61 cases of journalists murdered in Mexico, and nine other cases of disappearance since 2003.

An ensuing media blackout and watered-down stories related to drug cartels have caused many Mexican residents to turn to blogs and social media, such as YouTube and Twitter, for their news.

The medium has proven itself as being nearly immune to repercussions, because the authors and contributors can remain anonymous.

The most popular of the “Narco Blogs” is Blog Del Narco, which was started in March 2010. It began with simple YouTube posts, and now receives news updates, videos, and photographs from anonymous sources around the clock.

The author remains anonymous, yet the blog has become one of the central hubs of information regarding the Mexican drug war and brings in 3 million unique visitors each month.

“The idea of Blog Narco arises when the media and government in Mexico is trying to pretend that nothing is happening, because the media is threatened and the government is apparently bought, it was decided to create a media to inform people what happens, and to write the events exactly as they are without alterations or modifications to our convenience,” says a translated description on the blog.

Fear of Reporting

Many journalists in Mexico have become too scared to do their work and have sought ways to alter their reporting in order to avoid repercussions.

A newspaper photographer for El Diario de Juárez became the 11th journalist murdered this year in Mexico on Sept. 17. A unidentified man gunned down Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco in his car, and another journalist, Carlos Sánchez Colunga, was shot and sent to the hospital in critical condition.

The day following the attack, El Diario de Juárez, the largest newspaper in Mexico’s most violent city of Juarez, published an open letter to the cartels asking what the media needed to do in order to avoid further attacks. Orozco was the second reporter from the newspaper who was killed in the last two years.

The move has been viewed as the publication bowing to the cartels in order to avoid further violence. A translation of the article calls the cartels the “de facto authorities in this city.”

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“We do not want more deaths. We do not want more injuries or even more intimidated. It is impossible to exercise our role in these conditions. Tell us therefore, what they expect of us as a medium,” says the article.

The editorial is also perceived as an open plea for the government to provide more protection.

Although many Mexican media have not publicly written to the cartels asking how to avoid violent retaliations for their work, many have quietly censored their coverage.

Drug cartels are fighting each other over valuable trafficking routes along the Mexican border, they are fighting the Mexican military and police force, and they are fighting exposure by the media.

“Mexico has become the western hemisphere’s most dangerous country for the media. Its drug cartels, combined with government ineffectiveness and corruption, are largely to blame,” according to RSF.

RSF adds, “Not one of the murders or disappearances of journalists since 2000 has really been solved.”

Controlling Media

“Violence is a tool of the drug trafficking business and the objectives of the violence seem to vary,” according to a CRS report.

It adds, “The cartels prefer to intimidate and subvert a government rather than to bring it down according to one analysis because an intimidated government can deflect effective law enforcement initiatives, and it allows the drug cartels to operate largely undisturbed.”

Media is seen as a key tool by the cartels, which can be used either against them or in their favor. The use of murder and intimidation against journalists is in turn viewed by the cartels as competition for which the cartels control them, according to a CRS report.

Once they’ve gained control, some cartels use their hold over Mexican media as weapons to attack their competition by manipulating public opinion and hiding their own strengths and weaknesses.

“The Zetas in particular reportedly have undertaken a deliberate media campaign aimed at highlighting rival traffickers’ responsibility for crimes of violence and corruption, building up the myth of the Zetas’ indomitable power, and downplaying events that expose the Zetas’ weaknesses,” says a Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) report from June 2006.

Many journalists also describe being intimidated or offered bribes from the Zetas. There have also been cases of the Zetas forcing journalists into cars where they are beaten and lectured for several hours on how to cover the news, according to WOLA.

In some cases, Mexican journalists can become caught between two rival cartels demanding positive coverage of themselves and negative coverage of their enemies.

“Stories that anger cartels can endanger journalists and their colleagues, making decisions about what to report incredibly difficult for the local media, who have to balance their duty to provide information with their responsibility to protect their employees from reprisals,” according to WOLA.