Pubdate: Sun, 05 Dec 2010 Source: El Paso Times (TX) Copyright: 2010 El Paso Times Contact: http://www.elpasotimes.com/townhall/ci_14227323 Website: http://www.elpasotimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/829 Author: Chris Lopez JOURNALISTS' SAFETY IN MEXICO IS BIG CONCERN Times reporter Adriana Gomez Licon spent Thanksgiving week traveling to Veracruz, Mexico. She was reporting on the thousands of residents there who were living in Ciudad Juarez but now, through a government-sponsored relocation program, had been sent back to Veracruz due to the violence on the border. The story she produced in the four days she spent traveling through Mexico, and the work of photographer Jesus Alcazar, show up on this morning's front page. Later today, at the University of Texas at El Paso, top editors from news organizations across the United States and Mexico will gather to talk about how to ensure the safety of journalists, like Gomez Licon, who report out of Mexico. Among those in attendance: Alejandro Junco de la Vega, CEO and chairman of Grupo Reforma of Mexico City; Alfredo Carbajal, managing editor of Al Dia, the Spanish-language newspaper of The Dallas Morning News; Gustavo Salas Chavez, Mexico's special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression; Milton Coleman, senior editor of The Washington Post and president of the American Society of News Editors and vice president of the Inter-American Press Association; Katherine Corcoran, who leads the Mexico City bureau for The Associated Press; Dale Leach, head of AP in Texas; Carlos Mauricio Flores, executive editor of El Heraldo newspaper out of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Anders Gyllenhaal, vice president of news for the McClatchy Co. and head of its Washington, D.C., bureau; Julio E. Munoz, the executive director of the Inter-American Press Association; and Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio News-Express. The list goes on and on -- no doubt an impressive collection of journalists and thinkers who shape and mold the majority of stories coming out of Mexico as the country continues to wage war against its drug cartels. Other attendees: Tim Johnson, bureau chief in Mexico City for McClatchy; Wendy Benjaminson, who heads up AP's international drug-war beat team; Diana Fuentes, editor at the Laredo Morning Times; Alfredo Quijano Hernandez, editor of El Norte de Ciudad Juarez; Mike O'Connor, who is the Mexico representative for the Committee to Project Journalists; Eric Olson, senior associate for security policy at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute; Raul Plascencia Villanueva, president of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights; and Armando Velez, editor for El Diario de El Paso. We will spend today and Monday figuring out the best and safest way for journalists to continue to report in Mexico. Because if we don't, the violence spawned by drug-cartel wars will prevail over the ability of journalists to report freely and without fear of losing their lives -- and that can't happen. It is an important discussion, and the fact it is taking place in El Paso is a credit to the work by editors Carbajal, Coleman, Gyllenhaal, Leach and Rivard, who organized and pushed for it. We appreciate their holding the conversation on the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border, where the violence has been the worst. Of course, the El Paso Times will continue to dispatch reporters into Mexico to report on the situation. We do so in unity with our fellow journalists across Mexico and Latin America, and we will stand with them during the best and worst of times. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart