Topical post #3

On April 23, I attended a forum about examined drugs, killings, journalism, and border relations between the U.S. and Mexico at Santa Clara University.

At the event a collection of foreign correspondents and Mexican reporters discussed their personal observations and experiences on the issues with the ethnic media, students, and university faculty members.

Dudley Althaus, a Latin America bureau chief for the Houston Chronicle and one of the speakers at the forum, said that anyone who travels to Mexico or lives near the Mexican border, can potentially be affected by the violence there.

Proceso magazine, a Mexico City weekly publication, addressed in its 2008 investigative series that around 600 people have gone missing all throughout Mexico since late 2006, according to “Journalists Under Attack in Mexico,” a report by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Seven reporters vanished in Mexico within a three years span and many had investigated links between public officials and drug traffickers, according to the report compiled by the CPJ.

“Mexico is already one of the world’s deadliest nations for journalists, with 21 killed since 2000, at least seven in direct reprisal for their work,” the report stated.

Drug traffickers and criminal gangs are believed to be behind the vast majority of the slayings of the members of the press and execution-style murders of the public, stated in the report.

According to the CPJ’s new impunity index, which was released March 2009, Mexico ranked 11th in the world with an impunity index rating of 0.057 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants.

In last year’s impunity index, Mexico ranked 10th with an impunity index rating of 0.068.

The information from the forum is important for us journalists to understand. We have to be aware of what countries are dangerous for us to do reporting in.