Journalism and the Drug Cartels

With the drug war raging on between the drug cartels in Mexico, it has become increasingly difficult for the Mexican journalists to cover the stories that are related to the drug violence. They fear retribution on themselves and their families or they get paid off by these drug cartels and become corrupt.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has a great website dedicated to showing how many of these journalists have been killed, directly or indirectly, because of their coverage of the drug cartels. They have worldwide statistics, but this interactive map showing these deaths in Mexico shows just how dangerous it is.

Between the corruption and the deaths, it has become nearly impossible to find a news source that will show just exactly what is going on. A recent report by ProPublica tells how these newspapers in Mexico are failing at their jobs. Attempts by the mainstream media to cover the drug war in Mexico has been silenced.