Latin American journalists work to cover their stories and stay alive

Staying alive and unharmed is the main concern of journalists in Mexico, Honduras and Colombia. But the silence of journalists who muzzle themselves in self-defense is also a major worry

By Ronnie Lovler

That was the consensus of journalists from three countries who gathered in the northern port city of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, in late April for an international forum on security issues.

“We have to find ways that journalists can report on sensitive topics without exposing themselves to unnecessary risks,” said Urban Lofqvist, director of the Swedish chapter of Reporters Without Borders, an event organizer. Other sponsors included Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom, or FLIP and IMS.

Barrancabermeja was an apt choice for the forum; the city has been a historical hot spot for Colombia’s internal conflict.

Government protection

“In Santander, there are cases where journalists do not go into depth in stories about situations that impact the society if they (might) risk becoming targets,” said veteran journalist Diro César Gonzalez, editor and owner of the Barrancabermeja weekly, “La Tarde.” Barrancabermeja is located in the department of Santander.

Gonzalez has been under government protection since 2006, when he first began receiving death threats. He is protected under a Colombian law that provides security for threatened journalists and 15 other vulnerable groups.

Mexico’s legislature just passed a bill that would allow journalists to request federal intervention in attacks against them. That measure now awaits presidential approval. There is talk about, but no action on, similar efforts in Honduras.

Living with danger

In Mexico, attacks against journalists are so common that many news media no longer run stories about drug cartels. One of the most recent victims was a 22-year-old photojournalist whose body was found along with that of another young man in Saltillo northern Mexico in late April in an apparent cartel killing.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a February report that 14 Mexican journalists were killed and another 12 went missing between 2006-2012 because of their work. Mexico’s federal Human Rights Commission says 81 journalists have been killed since 2000.

In Honduras, with the world’s highest per capita homicide rate, according to a 2011 United Nations report, journalists are also targeted. CPJ found 12 murders since the 2009 military coup in that country and three non-fatal shootings in 2012.

“Covering difficult issues is a part of my life,” said Xiomara Orellana, an investigative reporter for Diario La Prensa in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. “One learns to live with danger. … You survive as you can. You have to live with fear. “

Her colleague, Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a founding reporter for the weekly RioDoce in Sinaloa, Mexico, says it is important to remember that every deadly incident from the drug cartels impacts people as individuals.

“To just count the dead is to contribute to people’s problems,” he said. “Talk about people not numbers. “

Colombian journalists have learned to do this. In the northern Columbia city of Monteria, Ginna Morelo, editor of El Meridiano de Cordoba and her colleague, Nydia Serrano, of the competing El Universal, say threats come regularly. In January, two journalists from another Monteria newspaper left the country after receiving death threats.

Serrano noted six of the 16 journalists killed in Colombia during the past 20 years were from her home state of Cordoba. “What’s important now is for the story to get out,” she said. “So for safety reasons, we don’t think about exclusivity anymore, but about sharing the information.”

Morelo says when she goes into the field to cover a story she checks in with the town priest and schoolteachers before she makes her rounds.

“The number of journalists killed is down, as is the threat…. and we feel more secure,” she said. The statistics are correct, but that’s because we don’t tell about 80 percent of what happens in this country.”

Dealing with self-censorship

A recent survey of 700 journalists in Colombia by the Antonio Nariño Project, an organization that monitors press issues, found 79 percent of them admit to engaging in self-censorship.

Colombia’s FLIP helps journalists publish their work away form their home turf. “We work with some local journalists who had a problem with self-censorship,” said Andrés Morales, FLIP executive director. “Their medium did not publish their work for security reasons. What we did was to create agreements or alliances with national media or other outlets so the work could be published.”

Arturo Wallace, a Colombia-based correspondent for the BBC says international journalists face less risk. ”The political cost of expelling an international correspondent is much higher than taking action against a national journalist.”

International correspondents may be tough, but when the going gets tough, most of the time, they get to leave. Not national journalists, who as Mexico’s Javier Valdez Cárdenas says, continue to do “the journalism that is possible in impossible conditions.”