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.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart