If it's not reported, did it happen?
Rebecca Small in Virginia also caught this article about media in Mexico. We have to ask whether the forces of intimidation will extend to limiting political reporting and whether reporting is vital to civil and political society.
Fearing Drug Cartels, Reporters in Mexico RetreatREYNOSA, Mexico — The big philosophical question in this gritty border town does not concern trees falling in the forest but bodies falling on the concrete: Does a shootout actually happen if the newspapers print nothing about it, the radio and television stations broadcast nothing, and the authorities never confirm that it occurred?
As two powerful groups of drug traffickers engaged in fierce urban combat in Reynosa in recent weeks, the reality that many residents were living and the one that the increasingly timid news media and the image-conscious politicians portrayed were difficult to reconcile...
Traffickers have gone after the media with a vengeance in these strategic border towns where drugs are smuggled across by the ton. They have shot up newsrooms, kidnapped and killed staff members and called up the media regularly with threats that were not the least bit veiled…
[T]he current news blackout along the border has only amplified fears, as false rumors of impending shootouts circulate unchecked, prompting many parents to pull their children from school and businesses to close...
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Labels: civil society, media, Mexico, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 10:56 AM
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