Kidnapped Reporters Appear In Chains In Narco Interrogation Video, La Familia Michoacána Suspected

By "El Huaso" for Borderland Beat

Two kidnapped administrators of a Guerrero crime news Facebook page appeared in chains in an interrogation video likely released by La Familia Michoacána, a criminal group they frequently discussed. A third man is missing but was not in the video.

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Cops Arrested for Allowing Theft of TV Personality’s Body

The officers were arrested because they took no action when two criminals snatched the body on Friday of Jose Luis Cerda Melendez.

The officers “did not provide any type of security or protection for the area during the performance of their duties and did not prevent” the criminals from stealing the body, the secretariat said.

The officers were turned over to the State Investigations Agency, or AEI, which will handle the case, the secretariat said.

Cerda, known as “La Gata,” hosted programs produced by the Monterrey division of Televisa, Mexico’s leading network.

His body was discovered Friday morning in the Monterrey suburb of Guadalupe.

Scrawled on a nearby wall was a message from the killers warning other local television personalities against continuing to collaborate with a particular criminal organization, AEI sources said.

Municipal police and a Televisa news team rushed to the scene, but the network’s reporter said during the live broadcast that he and his crew had to leave because the cops were withdrawing.

After the TV cameras were turned off, two men drove up, grabbed Cerda’s body and fled as the police stood by.

Cerda was abducted Thursday night while walking to his car after taping the “El Club” program at the Televisa studios in Monterrey.

Assailants accosted the TV host and two companions, cousin Juan Roberto Gomez and cameraman Luis Ruiz Ruiz, and forced them into an SUV at gunpoint.

The bodies of Gomez and Ruiz were discovered Friday on a main highway outside Monterrey, each killed with a single shot to the back of the head.

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Vehicle of Missing Journalists Found

Vehicle of Missing Mexican Journalists Found Riddled with Bullets.

Oaxaca - The car carrying two journalists missing since an attack two days ago on a caravan of human rights activists in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca was found riddled with bullets, the reporters’ boss said Thursday.

“The car of our comrade reporters has more than 30 bullet impacts,” Contralinea magazine editor Miguel Badillo told a radio station in Mexico City, complaining that state and federal authorities are doing nothing to find his missing employees.

Four vehicles carrying some 40 people were ambushed Tuesday while on a mission to deliver food to residents besieged in San Juan Copala, located some 300 kilometers (186 miles) west of Oaxaca city, the state capital.

Two people, Beatriz Alberta Cariño Trujillo and Finnish national Jyri Antero Jaakkola, were killed in the attack, while another activist was wounded and at least four people remain missing.

“Really, there is no search for our comrades,” Badillo said. “We don’t know ... if they are wounded, in hiding, or ... kidnapped.”

The editor said he and the families of Contralinea reporter Erika Ramirez and photographer David Cilia were “very worried” about their safety.

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Former Televisa Reporter Killed in Mexico

Chihuahua, Chihuahua – A former Televisa reporter and her friend were gunned down in the northern Mexican city of Chihuahua, officials said on Sunday.

The bodies of Maria Isabella Cordero, 23, and her 22-year-old friend were found inside an automobile late Thursday.

Cordero was working as director of public relations for the National Chamber of Commerce, or Canaco.

Bullet casings from assault rifles were found at the crime scene, but the motive for the killings has not been determined, the officials said.

Cordero was the sixth journalist killed this year in Mexico, where 12 journalists were murdered in 2009.

Two other members of the media are listed as missing in Mexico, considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

Journalists have protested against the attacks and the lack of prosecutions in the cases.

Since 2000, more than 60 journalists have been murdered in Mexico, with 10 others reported missing since 2003, Reporters Without Borders said in a recent report.

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War on Information In Mexico

Reynosa, Tamaulipas - Five Mexican journalists are missing tonight. Authorities say they were recently kidnapped in Reynosa.

The Mexican border city is fighting a war of information. There are reports of journalists being threatened or bribed to keep the truth from getting out. Now, an American-based group is trying to put a stop to it.

Last November we told you about a Mexican journalist working in Reynosa. Now she's keeping quite because of the increased risk.

We had to change her voice and blur her face. She is one of many journalists in the area who can't report what's happening. She says, "Self-censorships becomes more of a problem. Many issues affect daily lives and thousands of citizens in Mexico are going unreported."

The Committee to Protect Journalist is pushing for the Mexican government to do more investigations regarding media kidnappings.

The committee say there are more attacks on reporters and photographers in Mexico than ever before. The drug cartels target those trying to alert the public.

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Cartels Stifle News Coverage

Cartels use intimidation campaign to stifle news coverage in Mexico.

The Dallas Morning News

Reynosa, Mexico – In the days since a long-simmering dispute erupted into open warfare between the Gulf drug cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, censorship of news developments has reached unprecedented dimensions along much of Mexico's border with Texas. A virtual news blackout has been imposed, several sources said, enforced by threats, abductions and attacks against journalists.

In the past 14 days, at least eight Mexican journalists have been abducted in the Reynosa area, which is across the border from McAllen. One died after a severe beating, according to reports that could not be independently verified. Two were released by their captors. The rest are missing.

The truth cannot be killed, by killing reporters.

Even by the vicious standards of Mexico's drug cartels, which have made Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, the intimidation campaign is more far-reaching – and more effective – than other attempts to squelch media coverage of cartel activities, industry and law enforcement sources say. It is virtually impossible to safely report or verify, or even ask questions.

"We are under a virtual gag order," said Jorge Luís Sierra, a freelance journalist and researcher who lives in McAllen. "We live in silence."

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Mexican Army Hassling a Reporter

A news cameraman in a public street was told by Mexican soldiers that he could not record an accident involving one of their trucks. He was told he could be there but not record the accident.

Here in the U.S. if you can be there, then you can record. In the surface, it looks bad, especially since it involves one of their vehicles, it gives the impression of a cover up at minimum.

This continues to be problematic, authorities having the right to protect a scene and reporters trying to do their job, if it's legitimate on both sides, there should be a middle ground of compromise.

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Media gets Beat up in Juarez

Juárez reporter claims police beat him, 3 others outside Calderón meeting

El Paso Times

Ciudad Juarez, Chih - A reporter says federal police beat him and three colleagues while they tried to interview protesters outside the Camino Real Hotel, where Mexican President Felipe Calderón was meeting with people.

David Fuentes, reporter with Juárez television station Channel 5, said police asked him to move from the area where protesters had gathered.

"They threw us to the floor and started beating us up," he said.

He said police also beat two radio reporters and a reporter for La Polaka, an Internet news operation.

Police executives were not immediately available to respond to the allegations.

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The Photographer of the Dead

The photographer of the death has photographed 2,000 executions.

Ciudad Juarez, Chih - Just in one single day he photographed 19 executions and in ten years has surpassed 2,000. Lucio Soria is a photojournalist with the police beat of the newspaper PM in Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in the world, where in January alone there were 250 drug-related executions.

He is 59 years old and sometimes arrives at the scene before anyone else, except the sicarios, whom are usually seen leaving the crime scene, only to leave the body still with the warm blood that flows from their wounds. "It's my job and that's what gives me the adrenalin," he said in a recent interview.

Soria was born in 1951 in Torreon, Cohauila and at a young age, he moved to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, a place where last year there were 2.600 murders all linked to the narco war.

Soria lives with his wife and three daughters aged 29, 27 and 24. "I am a product for gentlemen, I live full of women," he says between laughs during a phone interview.

Soria began working as a lab technician at Kodak and in 1993 entered the daily newspaper PM, a Ciudad Juarez newspaper with a circulation of 60,000 copies, he covering the police cases.

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Journalist’s Body Recovered

Third journalist killed or kidnapped in Mexico in 2 1/2 weeks

Los Angeles Times

Saltillo, Mexico -- He'd just knocked off work when Valentin Valdes Espinosa, a reporter for the Zocalo of Saltillo newspaper, and two other journalists were intercepted by two trucks full of gunmen late Thursday.

Valdes Espinosa's body, bound, gagged and bearing five bullet holes, was found Friday morning. Tacked to it: a written warning of the kind often left by drug traffickers.

The two reporters with Valdes Espinosa were let go or got away, authorities said.

Valdes Espinosa, 28, is the third journalist slain or kidnapped in Mexico in the last 18 days. On Dec. 22, newspaper publisher Alberto Velasquez, from the resort town of Tulum, was shot to death by gunmen on a motorcycle.

On Dec. 30, veteran crime reporter Jose Luis Romero was seized by masked men in Los Mochis, in the drug-center state of Sinaloa. He's not been seen since. Hours after his disappearance, the lead detective on the case was slain.

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Caught in the Line of Fire

Mexican journalists trying to do their jobs are often caught in the line of fire.

"To be journalist in Mexico, it's very difficult, you know," says Daisy Rios. The 23-year-old Televisa reporter has already seen more death than many seasoned reporters.

In February, Reynosa, Mexico was rocked by gunfire. Rios found herself in the middle of a deadly firefight.

"We hear everybody screaming. Kids very scared," she explains.

Rios and her photographer took shelter at a nearby school.

"It was a very stressful situation. Sometimes I feel scared when we cover these kinds of stories," she adds.

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