Reporters Under Fire
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09/25/2017
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Dr. Celeste González de Bustamente, Associate Professor, School of Journalism, University of Arizona, speaks on "Reporters under Fire: Agressions against Journalists in Mexico & The United States." Dr. Gonzalez de Bustamante is the Insitute for Ethnic Studies' Visiting Distinguished Fellow for the September Graduate Seminar. Recorded September 21, 2017 at Sheldon Museum of Art.
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- [00:00:09.124]I'm very happy that all of
- [00:00:10.664]you are here today,
- [00:00:12.125]because we are very happy to welcome
- [00:00:16.559]Celeste González de Bustamante, an Associate Professor
- [00:00:19.869]at the University of Arizona School of Journalism,
- [00:00:23.789]who I have known for 17 years,
- [00:00:28.803]that's a long time.
- [00:00:31.343]Professor Celeste González de Bustamante has worked
- [00:00:35.262]as a TV news reporter, anchor, and producer
- [00:00:37.970]for commercial and public broadcasting for
- [00:00:41.048]more than a decade and a half before she
- [00:00:43.170]earned a doctorate in history at
- [00:00:45.730]the University of Arizona, and then joined the
- [00:00:49.352]faculty full-time in the fall of 2007.
- [00:00:53.833]She is here this week, teaching a course,
- [00:00:57.254]a graduate course, for the Institute for Ethnic Studies
- [00:01:02.516]on media and the borderlands.
- [00:01:05.064]And this is the second time that we have offered
- [00:01:07.501]this graduate course and one of the components
- [00:01:11.645]of this graduate course is a public lecture,
- [00:01:14.701]and that is what she's doing here tonight.
- [00:01:17.885]She's also an affiliate member of the
- [00:01:19.922]Center of Latin American studies, and also,
- [00:01:22.379]recently became an affiliate member of
- [00:01:24.361]Mexican-American studies.
- [00:01:27.144]Her research focuses on the historical and
- [00:01:30.861]contemporary issues related the news media
- [00:01:34.239]in Latin America, the US-Mexico border region,
- [00:01:37.860]and Latinos and Latinas in the United States.
- [00:01:42.882]Since 2011, she has been examining violence
- [00:01:45.485]against journalists in Mexico and
- [00:01:48.238]the United States.
- [00:01:51.661]Her publications are numerous, but she recently published,
- [00:01:56.477]or has published several books,
- [00:01:59.298]including Muy Buenas Noches: Mexico, Television,
- [00:02:02.162]and the Cold War, by the University of Nebraska Press,
- [00:02:06.004]which you can purchase outside
- [00:02:12.721]in the lobby if you want to, and I encourage
- [00:02:18.131]you to do so.
- [00:02:20.077]And there's also, she also published another book,
- [00:02:23.669]she co-edited another book, Arizona Firestorm:
- [00:02:27.434]Global Immigration Realities, National Media,
- [00:02:30.338]and Provincial Politics, as well.
- [00:02:35.197]So after the talk, after her talk,
- [00:02:38.957]we're gonna have a question and answers session,
- [00:02:42.978]and then afterwards she'll be happy to sign this book
- [00:02:46.338]for all of you, if you decide to
- [00:02:48.077]purchase this book, great reading.
- [00:02:55.074]So I'm not gonna delay anymore,
- [00:02:58.658]I'd like all of you to welcome
- [00:03:00.712]Professor Celeste González de Bustamante.
- [00:03:04.397](audience applause)
- [00:03:07.574]Thank you, James.
- [00:03:11.460]Thank you very much, Dr. Garza,
- [00:03:14.306]for that warm welcome,
- [00:03:16.568]and well, I wanted to tell you a couple of stories
- [00:03:21.518]that Professor Garza forgot to mention.
- [00:03:25.848]Yes, we have known each other for 17 years.
- [00:03:30.500]He didn't mention, I was 12 at the time when
- [00:03:33.247]we met, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
- [00:03:34.846]No, I was a little bit older.
- [00:03:36.168]I was actually in graduate school,
- [00:03:38.312]and he was finishing up his graduate work,
- [00:03:43.369]and we were both in Mexico City in 2000.
- [00:03:47.696]And for anybody here who knows a little bit
- [00:03:51.101]about Mexican history or recent events in Mexico,
- [00:03:54.557]you know that this was a pivotal year,
- [00:03:57.084]because this is the year that after 71 years
- [00:04:01.522]of PRI rule, the revolutionary party that ruled Mexico
- [00:04:06.824]for seven decades, a new party came in,
- [00:04:11.576]the National Action Party.
- [00:04:13.256]And James and I, through some twist of events,
- [00:04:17.140]were able to work together and cover that election,
- [00:04:21.357]and it was an amazing, amazing experience,
- [00:04:25.373]and also, I think he got a taste of what it would
- [00:04:29.029]be like to be a journalist and possibly,
- [00:04:33.794]we were actually with this team of activists
- [00:04:37.981]who were monitoring the elections,
- [00:04:40.621]because there had been a history of some voter fraud
- [00:04:43.864]in Mexico over the seven decades that the
- [00:04:47.818]revolutionary party was, Institutional Revolutionary
- [00:04:51.224]Party was in power.
- [00:04:53.746]So there were, at this location, polling location
- [00:04:57.750]where we were at, there was a little bit of tension,
- [00:05:00.674]and so James probably thought, well, no,
- [00:05:02.774]academia's more up my alley, and he's had a
- [00:05:10.339]great career so far in what he's looking at
- [00:05:12.877]in history of Mexico during the period before
- [00:05:17.874]the Mexico Revolution.
- [00:05:19.773]So I just wanted to thank Professor Garza,
- [00:05:23.229]and thank the Institute for Ethnic Studies
- [00:05:26.866]for inviting me out here, it's been an amazing
- [00:05:30.125]week so far.
- [00:05:31.549]I've been here working with some graduate students,
- [00:05:34.866]teaching a special seminar looking at the
- [00:05:38.466]US/Mexico border and the media's relationship to
- [00:05:41.641]how we understand or in some cases,
- [00:05:43.784]maybe misunderstand the border.
- [00:05:46.024]But tonight, I'm going to be talking a
- [00:05:48.621]a little bit more about some of my research
- [00:05:50.756]that focuses on Mexico and violence against
- [00:05:54.280]journalists there.
- [00:05:56.658]Some of you might have heard a little bit about that
- [00:05:58.616]and also the increasing violence and aggressions
- [00:06:03.195]against journalists here in this country,
- [00:06:07.336]and if there's a connection between
- [00:06:10.034]what's going on in both countries.
- [00:06:14.949]So, essentially what I would like to do is
- [00:06:17.592]give you, take a journalist's approach to
- [00:06:20.093]this issue of violence against reporters and
- [00:06:24.612]give you a little bit of the who, what, where,
- [00:06:27.754]why, and when and how, and hopefully there will
- [00:06:32.661]be room and some time for questions,
- [00:06:34.824]because I won't be able to cover everything
- [00:06:37.181]in this presentation.
- [00:06:39.547]But one of the things I wanted to mention is,
- [00:06:42.180]violence against journalists is a worldwide problem.
- [00:06:45.885]Think about over the past 10 years,
- [00:06:49.405]780 journalists around the world have been killed.
- [00:06:55.768]Seven hundred and eighty journalists,
- [00:06:58.312]that's a huge number.
- [00:07:00.669]I think it's staggering that most people who
- [00:07:03.549]don't maybe think about this subject,
- [00:07:06.264]know that actually that many journalists
- [00:07:08.226]have perished over the past decade,
- [00:07:10.744]just trying to inform people about what's going on.
- [00:07:17.864]Where does Mexico reside in terms of
- [00:07:21.368]the dangerous countries?
- [00:07:25.229]It is considered by the Reporters Without Borders
- [00:07:28.045]to be one of the five deadliest countries,
- [00:07:32.365]and if you just look at sole numbers from 2016
- [00:07:35.128]it's the second most dangerous country.
- [00:07:38.770]What's remarkable about this figure I think,
- [00:07:42.530]for people who study Mexico is number one,
- [00:07:45.545]it's a democracy.
- [00:07:48.066]I wouldn't say it's a super-strong democracy,
- [00:07:50.466]but it's a democracy.
- [00:07:51.998]It has build into its constitution, Article Six and
- [00:07:55.725]Seven of its constitution guarantee
- [00:07:57.986]freedom of expression; that's not to say that
- [00:08:01.821]there aren't any limits to it,
- [00:08:04.461]just like our First Amendment written into
- [00:08:06.392]our constitution, but there are limits to it.
- [00:08:11.714]At the same time, we have this number of journalists
- [00:08:14.994]who are being killed.
- [00:08:20.530]So if you think about it,
- [00:08:23.128]it's almost a journalist a month,
- [00:08:26.632]being killed for the last several years.
- [00:08:29.549]This here is a photo of a protest that was
- [00:08:35.644]in Mexico City, where journalists and some
- [00:08:39.944]activists got together to protest the violence
- [00:08:43.645]against journalists.
- [00:08:45.362]This was in 2014, where when at the time,
- [00:08:51.559]10 journalists had been killed in the
- [00:08:56.562]term of Javier Duarte, who is the governor
- [00:09:00.277]in the state of Veracruz, so by 2014,
- [00:09:04.301]during his time of being in office,
- [00:09:08.822]up until that 2014, ten journalists,
- [00:09:12.121]just in that state had been killed.
- [00:09:15.081]So if you see in this photo, the young child
- [00:09:18.158]is carrying a sign that says, "No More Bloodshed of
- [00:09:21.875]Journalists," periodistas is "journalists" in Spanish.
- [00:09:28.937]So, I like to kind of situate us,
- [00:09:32.617]where are when we're talking about Mexico,
- [00:09:35.931]where is Mexico.
- [00:09:37.636]And I think this is a pretty good map,
- [00:09:41.936]we can tell also here what some of the major cities are
- [00:09:48.668]where these cities along the border,
- [00:09:50.953]especially Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa,
- [00:09:55.990]and these three areas, there's a lot of violence
- [00:10:01.854]against journalists, there has been over
- [00:10:04.094]the past 15 years.
- [00:10:08.329]And so my colleague and I, Janine Relly,
- [00:10:11.129]have been looking at this issue of
- [00:10:13.353]violence against journalists since 2011,
- [00:10:16.373]and we have focused more on the northern part
- [00:10:19.230]of the border, partly because when we started
- [00:10:21.663]our study, this is where most of the journalists
- [00:10:24.009]were being killed, and also, we're,
- [00:10:26.665]as you can see, we're up in Tucson here,
- [00:10:31.401]which is just about an hour's drive to
- [00:10:34.185]the US/Mexico border.
- [00:10:36.825]And we understood that we were sort of in this
- [00:10:40.461]privileged position to be able to do this
- [00:10:42.708]research, not just because of our proximity,
- [00:10:45.225]Tucson is kind of a midpoint, sort of,
- [00:10:48.206]a little bit more toward the western edge,
- [00:10:50.766]or western part of the borderlands,
- [00:10:54.228]but we also were living in the United States, right?
- [00:11:00.926]So yes, a lot of my colleagues I think,
- [00:11:04.375]who are academics and could research this issue
- [00:11:07.689]of violence against journalists in the northern area
- [00:11:10.507]live on this side of the border, where the violence
- [00:11:13.705]is occurring, and have families,
- [00:11:16.486]and so it would be much more risky for them
- [00:11:20.228]to do it, so we felt it was really important
- [00:11:23.088]to do this research.
- [00:11:26.210]And these are the cities that we went through,
- [00:11:29.185]Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis, Rio Colorado,
- [00:11:32.052]they're the biggest media markets along the border,
- [00:11:36.473]and we've gone through twice, so went in 2011 and
- [00:11:40.784]interviewed journalists on both sides,
- [00:11:43.028]and we've gone through in 2014,
- [00:11:47.070]the tail end of 2013 and 2014.
- [00:11:50.633]And so far we've interviewed also interviewing
- [00:11:54.233]people in Mexico City, about a hundred journalists,
- [00:11:57.630]activists, and some academics.
- [00:12:02.333]One point that I wanna make is that yeah,
- [00:12:05.607]I'm a historian, so this I wanna look at a
- [00:12:07.646]little bit of the history too, and this issue
- [00:12:11.062]of violence against journalists is a historical issue,
- [00:12:14.788]it's got a historical legacy that goes way back,
- [00:12:19.172]even before 1968, but this is a point that
- [00:12:24.212]I researched in my book, Muy Buenas Noches,
- [00:12:28.116]looking at the history of television news,
- [00:12:31.492]and journalists such as Jorge Saldaña were
- [00:12:34.953]targeted at this period.
- [00:12:38.070]Who knows what happened in '68 in Mexico?
- [00:12:43.490]Here, people went, yes.
- [00:12:47.353]Okay.
- [00:12:49.228][Woman In Audience] Tlatelolco.
- [00:12:52.414]Tlatelolco, the massacre at Tlatelolco, right
- [00:12:55.156]So in '68, just like in other parts of the world,
- [00:12:59.198]there was a lot of student unrest in Mexico.
- [00:13:02.180]Students were calling for democracy,
- [00:13:04.441]and the media was covering this,
- [00:13:08.264]and at the same time, there was,
- [00:13:10.494]Mexico was gearing up for the Olympics.
- [00:13:15.614]It was the first time that the Olympics
- [00:13:17.470]were gonna be held in Latin America,
- [00:13:19.673]so it was a huge, huge deal.
- [00:13:21.236]They were pouring millions and millions of pesos
- [00:13:23.854]into building up the city, beautifying the city,
- [00:13:27.015]creating housing for the athletes who
- [00:13:31.300]would be staying there temporarily,
- [00:13:35.438]and then the tourists who were going to be coming,
- [00:13:37.940]and they wanted Mexico, this was Mexico's
- [00:13:39.838]shining moment to show that it had arrived
- [00:13:42.756]into a certain level of modernity, right?
- [00:13:45.881]So they didn't want these students out there
- [00:13:49.017]protesting, in fact, the students were on the
- [00:13:51.678]biggest campus in the country, at the national university
- [00:13:55.236]protesting, so the military came in,
- [00:13:58.718]and forced them to this plaza, this plaza at Tlatelolco,
- [00:14:04.521]to another part of the city.
- [00:14:06.798]And on October 2nd, 10 days before the Olympics
- [00:14:12.736]were supposed to start, there was a massacre
- [00:14:15.860]in this plaza, where up to 300 people were killed.
- [00:14:21.097]And people like Jorge Saldaña was covering,
- [00:14:25.038]he was covering this event.
- [00:14:28.478]And Jorge Saldaña's an interesting figure,
- [00:14:31.838]he has become known, he died in 2014,
- [00:14:36.900]but he became known as one of the critical figures
- [00:14:39.973]in Mexican journalism, you know, critical figures,
- [00:14:45.461]he critiqued the government, right?
- [00:14:48.350]And I interviewed Jorge for Muy Buenas Noches,
- [00:14:53.156]the book, and he said he was fired,
- [00:14:58.356]something like a dozen times, because they didn't like
- [00:15:02.814]what he was saying, that he was reporting that the
- [00:15:06.313]government was actually involved in this massacre.
- [00:15:12.933]And he was not not only censored for what he said,
- [00:15:18.177]but he was often censored, fired, and then hired back,
- [00:15:22.681]but fired for what his guests would say on television.
- [00:15:27.780]So imagine you have an activist come on TV,
- [00:15:31.902]and they say something, well, you can't control
- [00:15:34.237]what they say, but I guess they felt like he
- [00:15:37.369]should have been controlling their message
- [00:15:39.593]a little bit more, and so he was fired more
- [00:15:42.052]than a dozen times.
- [00:15:45.348]And then by 1984, we had a figure by the
- [00:15:49.301]name of Manuel Buendía, who was a very hard hitting
- [00:15:53.449]journalist in Mexico City, and he did a lot of
- [00:15:55.945]investigative work, and he was looking into
- [00:16:03.044]these issues of the CIA, and maybe some organized crime,
- [00:16:09.646]corruption, and he was killed.
- [00:16:13.604]His murder has never really been solved,
- [00:16:16.222]there's a lot of theories out there,
- [00:16:18.126]but his murder, because he was looking at organized crime,
- [00:16:21.689]became known as the first,
- [00:16:23.748]what we call "narcopolitical murder".
- [00:16:27.065]So what I'm getting at is, there were antecedents
- [00:16:32.564]to what we see today, right, things happening,
- [00:16:36.001]there's some patterns that were already in motion.
- [00:16:41.705]But if we look at the last 17 years since
- [00:16:48.004]this changeover of power, we see that the
- [00:16:52.105]number of journalists who haver been killed
- [00:16:54.846]has skyrocketed, so between 2000, 2017 more than
- [00:17:00.105]129 journalists have been killed in Mexico,
- [00:17:03.081]mainly in the peripheral states,
- [00:17:06.037]so not Mexico City, so it's in these more rural,
- [00:17:10.022]smaller populations, away from the economic centers.
- [00:17:15.380]That's, think of that, 129, that's more than
- [00:17:18.474]the number of people who are in this room right now,
- [00:17:24.111]a huge number of people.
- [00:17:26.853]Twenty people have been disappeared, there probably
- [00:17:29.417]are more, but this is what has been recorded,
- [00:17:34.116]so like 20 people have been "disappeared",
- [00:17:38.660]so there's disappearances, and then people who
- [00:17:42.481]have been disappeared, too.
- [00:17:46.241]So 51 attacks on media outlets between 2006
- [00:17:48.740]and 2017, so in the last 11 years.
- [00:17:52.302]And when I say, "attacks on media outlets,"
- [00:17:55.721]I mean everything from threatening,
- [00:17:59.022]calling the media outlet and threatening
- [00:18:03.444]whoever's there, grenades, in some cases,
- [00:18:08.985]shooting directly at the media outlet,
- [00:18:10.900]fires, you name it, that's what they've been
- [00:18:16.964]going through in different parts of the country.
- [00:18:19.704]And I wanna mention too, I don't wanna paint
- [00:18:22.580]a picture where every place you go in Mexico,
- [00:18:24.905]it's like rampant violence, because I think people
- [00:18:28.294]get a misunderstanding that when
- [00:18:31.711]I'm talking about violence or you hear about violence
- [00:18:34.217]in Mexico, that it's like that.
- [00:18:36.373]It's not, I bring students to Mexico, I bring them
- [00:18:41.289]to the border every week, we go down there,
- [00:18:43.751]spend the entire day down there on both sides
- [00:18:46.409]in Nogales, and I just, last spring,
- [00:18:50.186]I brought a group of students to Mexico City,
- [00:18:52.366]which is considered one of the safer cities,
- [00:18:55.444]but there are pockets.
- [00:18:57.070]There are pockets, and sometimes the pockets
- [00:18:59.856]are even just within a certain city.
- [00:19:02.302]You could think of Chicago, right?
- [00:19:04.277]It's a beautiful city, wonderful museums
- [00:19:08.201]and food and whatnot, but there might be places
- [00:19:11.721]that you wouldn't wanna go, because of level of violence,
- [00:19:14.795]right, and you don't have the contacts or whatever,
- [00:19:17.401]similar situation in Mexico.
- [00:19:22.293]So I wanna tell you a few stories here,
- [00:19:25.602]about who are these people who are being killed,
- [00:19:31.918]and what's happening to them.
- [00:19:34.074]So Gregorio "Goyo" Jiménez , he was actually
- [00:19:39.198]the journalist in that first image that I showed you
- [00:19:43.017]at the protest, he was like many journalists,
- [00:19:48.297]working outside the capital of Mexico,
- [00:19:51.013]living in one of the most violent areas in the
- [00:19:53.577]state of Veracruz, and he was getting paid about
- [00:19:55.952]twenty pesos, or less than two dollars for
- [00:19:59.854]every published story in local media,
- [00:20:02.798]plus 120 dollars a month for gas.
- [00:20:05.556]But not matter how many stories he filed,
- [00:20:07.795]the news organization would pay him about 3,000
- [00:20:11.060]pesos a month, less than 300 dollars.
- [00:20:14.932]So even if Jiménez was killing himself to file
- [00:20:19.454]like extra stories, the most he could get paid
- [00:20:22.201]from one news outlet was less than 500 dollars a month.
- [00:20:27.700]Yeah, and things are cheaper in Mexico,
- [00:20:31.017]but not that cheap, right, he had a lot of kids.
- [00:20:34.916]So he as a result, had to work for numerous publications.
- [00:20:40.795]So imagine having to work three jobs,
- [00:20:43.038]and that's essentially what he was doing.
- [00:20:45.454]And when people starting disappearing in his community,
- [00:20:47.945]Jiménez began to cover the issue for news outlets
- [00:20:50.793]such as Notice Sur, Liberal del Sur, La Red.
- [00:20:54.904]And according to some of Jiménez's colleagues,
- [00:20:57.971]he had told them that he had come across some information
- [00:21:00.094]about young girls who were being kidnapped from schools.
- [00:21:04.134]Soon after, Jiménez was disappeared
- [00:21:06.935]and his body was found several days later
- [00:21:09.670]on February 11th, 2014, in a clandestine grave.
- [00:21:16.108]This 43-year old father of seven would become
- [00:21:18.996]the 10th journalist to be killed under the administration
- [00:21:21.673]of Veracruz governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa, who took
- [00:21:25.411]office December 1st, 2010.
- [00:21:33.001]So another journalist who was working on the
- [00:21:36.190]periphery is Miroslava Breach, and Miroslava that
- [00:21:42.334]was working in the north, in the state of Chihuahua,
- [00:21:45.774]where Ciudad Juárez is, but she was working kind of
- [00:21:49.893]in the mountainous areas, where supposedly
- [00:21:53.214]organized crime groups have taken over,
- [00:21:57.430]and there's a lot of tension in this area.
- [00:22:00.391]She worked as a correspondent for the national news
- [00:22:03.017]outlet La Jornada, and the local newspaper
- [00:22:05.559]news outlet, Norte.
- [00:22:08.921]The 50-year old reporter was shot eight times
- [00:22:11.780]as she was leaving home in her car,
- [00:22:14.356]and she was accompanied by one of her three children,
- [00:22:17.401]shortly after seven in the morning,
- [00:22:20.772]according to some press reports.
- [00:22:23.145]The child wasn't injured, but Breach died while
- [00:22:25.321]being transported to the hospital.
- [00:22:28.601]She covered politics and crime, and the connections
- [00:22:31.460]between the two, so she was also covering crime
- [00:22:34.340]in this area that I mentioned, the sierra,
- [00:22:37.076]the mountainous area.
- [00:22:38.836]She wrote some stories that connected mayoral
- [00:22:41.684]candidates in some of the small towns in
- [00:22:44.201]the mountains with organized crime,
- [00:22:46.702]and apparently she had been getting
- [00:22:49.982]some threats for several years, so she did get
- [00:22:54.452]some warning signs, but she continued to
- [00:22:56.260]do her work, and when she was killed,
- [00:23:01.415]whoever killed her, this crime has not been solved,
- [00:23:06.359]nor has the crime against Gregorio Jiménez
- [00:23:11.161]been solved, the people who killed her left
- [00:23:15.902]a sign, a narco message, if you will.
- [00:23:21.233]It might have been not even narcos,
- [00:23:24.137]because they don't know exactly who did it,
- [00:23:28.208]it's said, "For being a snitch," she as killed for
- [00:23:32.768]being a snitch, and it said, "You're next, governor,"
- [00:23:39.371]so that is still kind of being investigated,
- [00:23:41.977]why the governor.
- [00:23:47.684]Police say that this was signed by
- [00:23:49.940]"the 80," el Ochenta.
- [00:23:52.722]People say that el Ochenta is Arturo Quintana,
- [00:23:56.436]who allegedly leads a criminal gang associated
- [00:23:58.953]with the crime syndicate known as La Linea,
- [00:24:01.716]which operates in the western half of the state.
- [00:24:08.513]So these are just two of the dozens, really,
- [00:24:11.657]of the people who've been killed.
- [00:24:13.739]I think it's important to really talk about
- [00:24:17.844]the journalists as people, and not just talk
- [00:24:20.420]about the numbers, because the numbers are
- [00:24:22.537]staggering, but these are people who have families,
- [00:24:25.017]who were part of the community in which
- [00:24:28.077]they were working.
- [00:24:31.536]The question that comes up, well who's perpetrating
- [00:24:35.145]all this violence?
- [00:24:36.905]And the government likes to say that well,
- [00:24:41.584]it's the narcos, you know, it is the organized crime
- [00:24:47.705]groups that are doing it, and in some cases,
- [00:24:49.844]yes, it probably is.
- [00:24:51.563]But, according to many NGOs that are looking
- [00:24:57.305]at the this subject, I mean, they monitor
- [00:25:01.029]a lot of these aggressions, half of the crimes against
- [00:25:06.448]journalists in 2017 were perpetrated by government
- [00:25:11.045]authorities who don't want certain messages
- [00:25:16.082]to get out.
- [00:25:19.322]And sometimes the lines are blurred between
- [00:25:22.555]corrupt government officials and the
- [00:25:26.499]members of organized crime.
- [00:25:31.040]So why are they killing the messengers, why?
- [00:25:37.281]I think we need to kind of go back to this
- [00:25:39.977]earlier period that I started to talk about
- [00:25:42.378]in 1968, where Mexico had kind of this
- [00:25:46.997]weak press that was very much publishing
- [00:25:55.157]a lot propaganda for the government,
- [00:25:59.432]on all levels.
- [00:26:01.248]They had something called pipsa,
- [00:26:03.344]was a subsidy of news print, so they would
- [00:26:06.584]give the newspapers, almost give it away,
- [00:26:09.488]but they would pay, newspapers would pay just
- [00:26:12.547]a few centavos for news print, and be able to
- [00:26:16.170]publish, unless, unless they started to publish
- [00:26:21.872]things that the government didn't like,
- [00:26:24.426]and they would pull their subsidy, and then poof,
- [00:26:26.907]there goes that news organization, right.
- [00:26:30.749]So that is part of sort of the history
- [00:26:34.369]of not having a really strong watch,
- [00:26:37.688]what we would call "watchdog press", right.
- [00:26:40.533]And 1968 is sort of when that starts
- [00:26:42.512]to emerge with people like Jorge Saldaña and
- [00:26:45.397]other folks in the print media.
- [00:26:49.637]And then we also are starting to see drug trafficking
- [00:26:53.418]routes through the border states, right?
- [00:26:56.762]These were areas where during Prohibition,
- [00:26:59.921]alcohol was the contraband of choice
- [00:27:02.901]to traffic through, and then after that,
- [00:27:09.629]in the latter part of the 20the century,
- [00:27:11.504]these become the drug routes through the border areas.
- [00:27:17.125]And then also, like I was referring to before,
- [00:27:20.405]the transfer of power in 2000,
- [00:27:23.099]where you had prior to this changeover in power,
- [00:27:29.120]where a new political party comes in,
- [00:27:31.733]so established rules, right.
- [00:27:34.858]Established rules with of formal institutions,
- [00:27:39.781]and established rules with informal,
- [00:27:41.856]so I'm getting at like, people who are involved
- [00:27:44.538]with illicit activities, right?
- [00:27:47.016]So when the PRI leaves, kind of loses control,
- [00:27:51.744]then there's this vacuum that people talk about,
- [00:27:56.400]and that creates an opportunity for the drug cartels
- [00:28:00.854]to come in and gain power, and become,
- [00:28:03.258]in some cases, what news authorities,
- [00:28:06.416]news journalists and news organizations
- [00:28:11.173]have called "de facto authorities" in
- [00:28:14.336]communities like Juárez.
- [00:28:18.149]And then there are some contemporary realities, right?
- [00:28:22.613]The drug and illegal activity that's happening
- [00:28:25.147]in the border states is continuing,
- [00:28:27.404]these weakened institutions, such as the judicial system,
- [00:28:32.651]and what I'm getting at here is this high level
- [00:28:36.138]of impunity, right, so this is connected to
- [00:28:40.044]impunity and corruption, so there might be
- [00:28:43.084]an investigation on the state level,
- [00:28:46.392]but that investigation really never goes anywhere,
- [00:28:50.853]never goes to trial.
- [00:28:52.586]So you have a situation where 99 percent,
- [00:28:56.604]actually, a little bit higher than 99 percent
- [00:28:59.328]of the crimes against journalists go unsolved,
- [00:29:04.459]right, can you imagine that?
- [00:29:06.730]Ninety-nine percent of, I mean, it's very close
- [00:29:09.173]to the impunity rate in general, in the country,
- [00:29:12.675]so imagine that in like this country,
- [00:29:15.147]when you ask, how is it that 129 journalists
- [00:29:18.010]have been killed?
- [00:29:19.492]I mean, the simple answer is, because they can.
- [00:29:25.632]And nobody gets prosecuted, and so journalists,
- [00:29:32.320]we've seen cases where journalists have come across
- [00:29:35.152]the border and continued to publish,
- [00:29:37.893]and they will be asked, well, why are you coming
- [00:29:40.794]across the border, and you're publishing some
- [00:29:43.194]really critical stuff, you could still get murdered,
- [00:29:46.234]and their response is, "Well yes, we could get
- [00:29:50.554]"murdered, but there's going to be an investigation,
- [00:29:54.533]"a real investigation in this country, in the US,
- [00:29:57.571]"and whoever does, whoever is behind the crime,
- [00:30:03.108]"is more likely to be caught and sent to prison,"
- [00:30:08.549]or whatever the punishment would be.
- [00:30:12.048]I'm painting a pretty grim picture, and it is.
- [00:30:15.749]But I do wanna say that there are some
- [00:30:19.066]positive sides to this.
- [00:30:24.841]As a result of all of the violence,
- [00:30:28.234]there's been more solidarity among journalists,
- [00:30:32.373]in some cases.
- [00:30:33.877]So in communities like Juárez, that has the
- [00:30:35.957]sort of a history of being activists,
- [00:30:39.114]they have a stronger civil society than
- [00:30:41.491]in other parts of the border, you have organizations
- [00:30:44.370]like this Juárez Journalist Organization that
- [00:30:47.397]sprouted up in the last decade, and these are
- [00:30:52.117]women who helped to form this organization,
- [00:30:54.794]which I think is interesting, because we hear a lot
- [00:30:58.277]about machismo in Mexico, and it's a male-dominated
- [00:31:02.397]country, and that's true, but in many cases,
- [00:31:05.756]and we've seen throughout our research,
- [00:31:07.482]that women are taking charge, and I think that's inspiring.
- [00:31:12.917]We see Araly Castanon said, "The advantage is that we
- [00:31:18.880]"are all friends and we are all journalists,
- [00:31:21.401]"and at the end of the day we could all talk to
- [00:31:23.402]"each other, because people from the network are
- [00:31:25.561]"also friends.
- [00:31:27.282]"Of course, it's very helpful to go out to talk
- [00:31:29.600]"and release stress."
- [00:31:31.776]So Araly is the third from the left,
- [00:31:34.693]or the second from the right, and it's probably
- [00:31:36.592]easier to say it that way.
- [00:31:38.996]That's Araly here, Sandra Rodriguez is here,
- [00:31:44.928]she's written a novel, non-fiction novel about
- [00:31:49.850]the impunity level in Juárez and her book has
- [00:31:56.234]been translated to English,
- [00:31:58.912]I can't remember the English translation,
- [00:32:01.930]but the Spanish title is, La Fabrica del Crimen,
- [00:32:04.970]which is the crime factory, if you will,
- [00:32:08.970]crime plant.
- [00:32:11.066]And then we have Rocio Gallegos,
- [00:32:15.317]who you're gonna hear from in a second,
- [00:32:17.141]she's the editor-in-chief of the El Diaro de Juárez,
- [00:32:22.703]and Lucy Sosa, so these are founding members
- [00:32:26.341]of this Juárez journalist network.
- [00:32:31.242]And what do they do, they do all kinds of things
- [00:32:33.082]from just informal get togethers to
- [00:32:35.781]more substantial training.
- [00:32:38.944]I was in some training that they were part of last fall
- [00:32:43.802]actually, we were learning about digital security,
- [00:32:49.594]which is an important thing for journalists.
- [00:32:54.576]So I would like to play just a clip
- [00:32:57.258]of Rocio Gallegos, and she's talking about the
- [00:33:01.621]height of the violence in Juárez, and how journalists
- [00:33:06.218]from different media outlets banded together
- [00:33:11.616]and have been helping each other out
- [00:33:13.861]in the midst of all this violence,
- [00:33:16.165]and this is a little different, right,
- [00:33:20.682]because in the journalism world if you know
- [00:33:23.685]a little bit about it, it tends to be really
- [00:33:26.608]highly competitive, and journalists wanna get
- [00:33:28.890]an exclusive, forget about my competitor,
- [00:33:31.429]it's very individualistic, and in this case though,
- [00:33:36.865]and in some of other cases, we found that journalists
- [00:33:39.488]are teaming up and trying to support each other
- [00:33:42.554]in lots of different ways.
- [00:33:44.197]So I'd like to play just a little clip of
- [00:33:46.615]the interview that I did with Rocio
- [00:33:50.160]a couple of years ago.
- [00:34:10.581](speaks Spanish)
- [00:35:35.538]So Rocio is still working as
- [00:35:40.377]the editor-in-chief, and she was,
- [00:35:45.250]she knew Miroslava and also another journalist
- [00:35:49.010]who worked with Miroslava, and who has now
- [00:35:53.309]had to leave the state of Chihuahua because
- [00:35:59.389]of threats against her.
- [00:36:02.669]And so but she's continuing to work there,
- [00:36:06.345]she feels it's very, very important to
- [00:36:09.549]continue her work and to tell the stories
- [00:36:12.818]as much as they can, about what's happening in Juárez.
- [00:36:19.277]So I'm gonna transition now to the United States.
- [00:36:23.178]Where does the United States figure in all of this?
- [00:36:27.640]Here's these figures from one of the NGOs
- [00:36:33.917]that looks at and comes up with lists of
- [00:36:40.840]press freedoms around the world,
- [00:36:43.618]and according to this one, which is,
- [00:36:46.459]I'm pretty sure it's based on the Reporters Without Borders,
- [00:36:50.658]yes, Reporters Without Borders annual list of the
- [00:36:55.278]most free countries, and the least free,
- [00:37:00.626]and it's sort of what you would expect.
- [00:37:03.640]Number one is Norway's number one,
- [00:37:06.205]North Korea's the last, this is out of 180
- [00:37:09.533]countries, right.
- [00:37:12.181]Mexico's 147th, Costa Rica is an interesting outlier
- [00:37:18.050]in Latin America, being among the top 10,
- [00:37:21.608]with having lots of press freedom there,
- [00:37:23.970]we can talk about that, but it shows you sort
- [00:37:28.959]of the range, here.
- [00:37:31.428]Where do you think the United States falls?
- [00:37:35.693]Just, I don't expect anybody to know the answer,
- [00:37:37.853]but just like, take a guess.
- [00:37:41.874]Fifty, that's pretty good, actually.
- [00:37:48.613]You're a little bit more pessimistic, than. (chuckles)
- [00:37:51.714]What I think that most people might think
- [00:37:53.952]it's a little bit higher, right?
- [00:37:55.896]We have the First Amendment, we have these
- [00:37:58.936]country that supports vigorous debate,
- [00:38:01.896]and all of these things, but it's 43rd,
- [00:38:06.856]according to the latest ranking,
- [00:38:09.276]and it's dropped, so it went from 41st to 43rd.
- [00:38:19.319]Journalist are increasingly getting arrested
- [00:38:22.983]when covering protests.
- [00:38:25.678]They don't have a "shield law", this would
- [00:38:28.120]be similar to attorney/client privilege,
- [00:38:30.904]if you're helping, if you're trying to tell a
- [00:38:34.824]story, you need the source to have some
- [00:38:37.842]confidence that you're not going to
- [00:38:39.839]give their names out, if it's a whistleblower case,
- [00:38:45.663]for example, or something even maybe more,
- [00:38:49.831]maybe more dangerous.
- [00:38:52.568]And then there's an increased, prolonged searches
- [00:38:59.010]of journalists and their devices along the border,
- [00:39:01.730]we're seeing that.
- [00:39:03.490]In fact, we have Michael Abramowitz, I'm not sure
- [00:39:09.008]I'm pronouncing that correctly, Abramowitz,
- [00:39:11.992]says "Never in 38 years that Freedom House,"
- [00:39:14.728]is one of these monitoring agencies,
- [00:39:16.552]"has been monitoring global press freedom,
- [00:39:18.826]"has the United States figured as much in the
- [00:39:21.949]"public debate about the topic as in 2016,
- [00:39:25.507]"and the first months of 2017,"
- [00:39:29.048]and we could all maybe guess why, right.
- [00:39:32.571]We could all guess why.
- [00:39:35.013]This guy, Mr. Fake News is not afraid
- [00:39:40.600]to criticize the media, as we know.
- [00:39:42.882]Puts it, tweets it out all the time.
- [00:39:45.922]And actually has called the news media
- [00:39:51.640]"the enemy of the American people", right?
- [00:39:56.274]Not his enemy, "the enemy of the American people".
- [00:40:01.528]This phrase, if there's a book called Enemy of the People,
- [00:40:05.229]but also, this phrase has been used very
- [00:40:11.030]authoritarian figures, Russian dictators,
- [00:40:15.984]such as Stalin.
- [00:40:19.233]I mean, we don't know if he borrowed it from
- [00:40:21.181]Stalin or not, but I mean, that phrase has been used,
- [00:40:25.475]and in fact, there's a quote by,
- [00:40:31.337]I wanted to show you, or tell you,
- [00:40:34.664]by a professor of Russian and East European
- [00:40:39.160]studies at the University of Pennsylvania
- [00:40:41.775]who says, "Trump's 'enemy of the people' phrase,
- [00:40:46.278]"in essence, it was a label that meant death,
- [00:40:49.666]"it meant you were subhuman and entirely expendable"
- [00:40:54.626]when previous dictators had used that,
- [00:40:59.442]and now our president is using this same phrase.
- [00:41:05.439]I guess a lot of people liked it though,
- [00:41:07.578]a hundred and one thousand people liked it,
- [00:41:10.621]and 33,000 people, this was by February 17th,
- [00:41:14.824]we could go to check to see how many more
- [00:41:17.058]people tweeted it, or retweeted it.
- [00:41:22.525]So you might have heard some of these
- [00:41:24.911]attacks against the press, but this is a compilation
- [00:41:29.666]that I found that was put together by CNN.
- [00:41:34.720]This was before the election, but I think it's
- [00:41:38.168]a good example of the rhetoric and the tone
- [00:41:43.533]that is being used to attack the media verbally.
- [00:41:49.090]And we could debate whether that could lead
- [00:41:52.733]to physical violence against members of the press.
- [00:41:58.288]I've been dealing with the press a long time.
- [00:42:01.096]I think the political press is among the
- [00:42:03.552]most dishonest people that I've ever met.
- [00:42:05.595](somber music)
- [00:42:10.541]The people don't trust you, and the people
- [00:42:12.178]don't trust the media.
- [00:42:13.696]She starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,
- [00:42:16.221]and you know, you could see there was blood
- [00:42:18.205]coming out of her eyes,
- [00:42:19.645]blood coming out of her wherever.
- [00:42:22.744]I have the right to ask the question.
- [00:42:24.424]No you don't, you haven't been called.
- [00:42:25.864]I have the right to ask the question--
- [00:42:27.663]Go back to Eurovision.
- [00:42:28.786]And he stood up and started ranting and raving
- [00:42:31.144]like a madman, he was totally,
- [00:42:33.341]absolutely out of line.
- [00:42:35.463]Donald Trump under fire again,
- [00:42:38.770]this time, for seeming to mock a reporter's disability.
- [00:42:42.809]The poor guy, you gotta see this guy,
- [00:42:44.548]ah, I don't know what I said, ah,
- [00:42:46.070]I don't remember!
- [00:42:47.330]The mainstream media, these people back here,
- [00:42:51.191]they're the worst, they are so dishonest,
- [00:42:54.327](crowd cheering)
- [00:42:55.847]no, no, they're so dishonest,
- [00:42:58.028]and by the way, some of the media's terrific.
- [00:43:00.562]But most of it, 70 percent, 75 percent,
- [00:43:03.223]is absolute dishonest, absolute scum,
- [00:43:06.805]remember that, scum!
- [00:43:08.645]Scum, they're totally dishonest people.
- [00:43:11.404]She's back there, little Katie,
- [00:43:14.124]she's back there, what a lie it was,
- [00:43:17.948](crowd booing)
- [00:43:20.252]what a lie, Katie Couric!
- [00:43:22.334]What a lie it was for NBC to have written that,
- [00:43:25.840]it was a total lie.
- [00:43:27.319]But let me tell you about the Wall Street Journal,
- [00:43:29.020]I have no respect whatsoever for Wall Street Journal,
- [00:43:31.138]I don't think they know what they're doing.
- [00:43:33.054]They have taken me on so much, it's so ridiculous,
- [00:43:36.140]every day, editorials, bad editorials,
- [00:43:38.599]I don't even wanna read it very much anymore,
- [00:43:41.098]they're so wrong.
- [00:43:42.517]We're gonna open up those libel laws,
- [00:43:45.282]so that when the New York Times writes a hit piece,
- [00:43:49.017]which is total disgrace, or when the Washington Post,
- [00:43:52.844]which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece,
- [00:43:55.986]we can sue them, and win money.
- [00:43:58.427]By the way, the world's most dishonest people are back
- [00:44:01.087]there, look at all the cameras going.
- [00:44:03.388]Look at all those guys, unbelievable.
- [00:44:06.647]They are dishonest, most of them, not all of them,
- [00:44:09.319]but most of them.
- [00:44:10.361]I'm not looking for credit, but what I don't want
- [00:44:12.705]is when I raise millions of dollars,
- [00:44:15.070]have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here
- [00:44:19.436]from ABC, he's a sleaze, Michael.
- [00:44:22.386]You're a sleaze, because you know the facts,
- [00:44:24.807]and you know facts well.
- [00:44:26.468]It was very unfair that the press treated
- [00:44:28.274]us so badly, go ahead.
- [00:44:32.936]So this is, not every President has had a
- [00:44:36.802]great relationship with the press, in fact,
- [00:44:39.282]most presidents don't, they don't like to be
- [00:44:42.786]criticized, but this is a shift,
- [00:44:45.287]where a President is actually coming out
- [00:44:48.290]and attacking the press, right.
- [00:44:52.210]And I also wanna say, Professor Garza mentioned
- [00:44:56.050]that I worked as a journalist for a decade
- [00:45:01.751]and a half, and so I understand that there
- [00:45:05.010]are a flaws with the media, right.
- [00:45:08.050]There are a lot of things that we could
- [00:45:09.612]talk about that needs to be improved,
- [00:45:11.746]but do we want a situation where the entire,
- [00:45:17.789]the fourth estate is being called into question,
- [00:45:20.932]this institution that supposed to be a check
- [00:45:24.412]on the President and other powers,
- [00:45:28.647]not just the executive, but the legislative,
- [00:45:31.765]and the judicial, and other powerful institutions,
- [00:45:35.506]that's why we have the First Amendment,
- [00:45:38.262]and have some protections, special protections
- [00:45:40.962]for news media.
- [00:45:44.402]So have the President saying these things,
- [00:45:48.583]and then shortly later after,
- [00:45:50.380]we have people selling these kinds of t-shirts.
- [00:45:57.194]Is there a correlation, there's probably
- [00:46:00.318]some negotiation there, one is reflecting
- [00:46:03.042]the other and one is influencing the other,
- [00:46:05.314]but this is pretty threatening, I think.
- [00:46:14.055]I still haven't been able to find too much
- [00:46:15.999]about the person who is wearing this shirt,
- [00:46:18.924]but a lot of people liked it, apparently 1700 people
- [00:46:25.164]liked it, well almost 3000 people retweeted it,
- [00:46:29.581]so that's the thing, right.
- [00:46:31.062]I mean, we have one person in office,
- [00:46:32.930]but there's a lot of followers, too,
- [00:46:35.786]and we could talk about that.
- [00:46:38.487]Okay, so this brings me to some other
- [00:46:41.820]stories I'd like to tell you about,
- [00:46:43.939]attacks against journalists in the United States,
- [00:46:46.700]and then I'll talk a little bit about the
- [00:46:48.402]history of some of this.
- [00:46:50.160]So we have Jenni Monet, who was covering the
- [00:46:52.860]Standing Rock case not too long ago,
- [00:46:58.882]and she was arrested.
- [00:47:00.716]She was arrested on charges of trespassing,
- [00:47:05.646]and she was one of, I think five journalists
- [00:47:07.580]who were arrested.
- [00:47:09.678]She was booked, strip searched,
- [00:47:11.920]one is the only among, she's Native American,
- [00:47:16.625]she was strip searched, was brought in with
- [00:47:19.343]other journalists and people who weren't
- [00:47:23.262]Native, or weren't people of color,
- [00:47:25.525]and they weren't strip searched, and her case
- [00:47:29.932]is still, I guess, she's supposed to,
- [00:47:33.085]I think it's set for trial in June of 2018.
- [00:47:40.194]Somebody might maybe be more familiar
- [00:47:42.412]with Amy Goodman, was also charged with
- [00:47:45.647]trespassing and rioting at Standing Rock,
- [00:47:51.874]while trying to cover this situation,
- [00:47:55.770]and these people who were, milder,
- [00:48:01.277]I mean, they're not being attacked physically,
- [00:48:04.795]but this is certainly trying to send a message
- [00:48:07.154]to the rest of the folks who might wanna
- [00:48:10.098]cover this, right.
- [00:48:13.660]And then we have real violence,
- [00:48:16.197]we have Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr.
- [00:48:21.319]I don't know if anybody here remembers this case.
- [00:48:24.020]He was a journalist in Oakland,
- [00:48:27.775]served as an editor-in-chief at the Oakland Post
- [00:48:30.882]from up until June and when he was murdered.
- [00:48:35.004]He had a 37-year career, including lengthy periods
- [00:48:38.364]as a reporter for the Detroit News and the Oakland Tribune,
- [00:48:41.447]and then in June of 2011,
- [00:48:43.911]Yusuf Bey IV, a local bakery owner and associate
- [00:48:48.880]of Antoine Mackey were convicted of ordering
- [00:48:52.741]Bailey's murder because of this,
- [00:48:57.402]this is also a case, a whole project has been created
- [00:49:01.839]to try to investigate exactly what was going
- [00:49:04.979]on with this case, and why he was actually murdered,
- [00:49:08.421]but he was investigating some things that
- [00:49:11.642]were going, maybe fraud and corruption
- [00:49:15.679]related to that bakery.
- [00:49:21.557]And then, I don't know if people remember,
- [00:49:24.597]some folks might remember the killing
- [00:49:27.386]of Alan Berg in 1984.
- [00:49:32.885]He was kind of this like, liberal,
- [00:49:37.976]very provocative, some people would even say
- [00:49:42.543]he was obnoxious, but you know, that's what talk radio
- [00:49:47.566]hosts do, you know,
- [00:49:49.509]But a lot of people didn't like what
- [00:49:51.546]he was saying, and a white supremacist didn't
- [00:49:57.887]like what he was saying in particular,
- [00:49:59.866]and killed him, and the Mark Potok
- [00:50:02.965]from the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty
- [00:50:05.420]Law Center said that "Berg's slaying marked an early
- [00:50:08.020]"signpost on the road that led to the
- [00:50:10.179]1995 Oklahoma City bombing."
- [00:50:17.018]Closer to my home in Arizona,
- [00:50:21.509]Don Bolles was a reporter for the Arizona Republic,
- [00:50:25.631]and he was investigating some mafia ties
- [00:50:29.692]with business in Phoenix, and he was killed
- [00:50:37.785]through a car bomb.
- [00:50:39.647]So you see here, this was his car.
- [00:50:45.029]It was bombed on, the actual bomb went off
- [00:50:50.629]in his car, and then he died,
- [00:50:53.144]he was hospitalized, and died several days later.
- [00:50:56.709]And his case is important too,
- [00:50:59.189]because I mean, it marks a devastating,
- [00:51:03.786]dramatic event, an attack against a journalist,
- [00:51:07.727]but what happened after Don Bolles's death,
- [00:51:11.328]journalists from all over the country
- [00:51:13.365]got together, and they created what
- [00:51:14.900]was called the Arizona Project.
- [00:51:17.059]And so you had people, reporters from the
- [00:51:20.038]New York Times, and journalists, investigative journalists
- [00:51:23.722]from all across the country converge onto Phoenix,
- [00:51:27.364]and to try to figure out what actually happened
- [00:51:30.106]with this murder case.
- [00:51:32.869]You know, it's still some, believe it or not,
- [00:51:36.469]it's still somewhat of a mystery,
- [00:51:38.118]it has not been solved.
- [00:51:42.102]But the fact that journalists, this was one
- [00:51:44.346]of the moments in US history where journalists
- [00:51:47.045]got together to try to work together to,
- [00:51:49.247]and to, in some ways this was a way of
- [00:51:52.171]resisting the violence against them.
- [00:51:56.031]But this, I mean violence against journalists
- [00:51:57.910]in the United States goes way, way back, right.
- [00:52:03.002]So we have in the early part of the country's history,
- [00:52:07.722]and in the 19th century, Elijah Parish Lovejoy,
- [00:52:12.842]he was an editor of a paper and was an abolitionist.
- [00:52:16.581]And people who wanted to continue slavery
- [00:52:19.599]didn't like what he was writing,
- [00:52:21.957]so they shot him, they shot him,
- [00:52:26.691]and John Quincy Adams said that he became
- [00:52:29.054]the "First American martyr for the freedom
- [00:52:31.914]"of the press, and the freedom of the slave."
- [00:52:36.918]So my point, I guess I've, it wasn't to be
- [00:52:40.170]like a whole line of obits, here,
- [00:52:43.530]it was to really show you that there's a
- [00:52:46.394]history in our own country of very violent
- [00:52:49.171]attacks against journalists, and that no,
- [00:52:55.120]we don't have 129 people who have been
- [00:52:58.633]killed in the last 17 years,
- [00:53:00.933]but we have an increasing level of violence,
- [00:53:04.554]and it seems like a tolerance for this violence,
- [00:53:07.743]and there doesn't seem to be a lot of outrage,
- [00:53:09.958]at least from what I can tell,
- [00:53:11.765]maybe that will change.
- [00:53:14.239]But I would like you to think perhaps of Mexico
- [00:53:20.837]being a warning for us.
- [00:53:27.758]Not only should you just want to keep informed
- [00:53:31.078]about what's happening in Mexico because we're
- [00:53:33.029]so tied to Mexico economically, and what happens
- [00:53:37.573]in Mexico will affect what happens in the United States,
- [00:53:40.831]and what happens in the United States affects Mexico,
- [00:53:44.191]but also, we have a history of this kind of thing,
- [00:53:48.970]and things can get worse.
- [00:53:52.250]Things can get worse quickly.
- [00:53:55.493]If you ask people in Mexico if they thought,
- [00:53:58.735]if you asked them 30 years ago if they thought
- [00:54:02.100]that there would be nearly a 130 people who
- [00:54:06.837]would be killed in 15 years, journalists,
- [00:54:09.781]no, no, I don't believe that,
- [00:54:12.703]but this is where we are.
- [00:54:15.900]So I'm thinking Mexico is sort of our
- [00:54:18.367]canary in a coalmine, right?
- [00:54:21.727]We should pay attention to that,
- [00:54:25.525]and it's what we have as journalists,
- [00:54:29.301]anybody in this room could be a journalist,
- [00:54:31.439]what happens against journalists happens against
- [00:54:34.177]you, in some ways, so you may think of it
- [00:54:37.823]in that way.
- [00:54:39.881]And then just a final thought, I was talking about
- [00:54:45.045]the Arizona Project, and is there maybe
- [00:54:51.925]a time for a Mexico Project, then?
- [00:54:54.527]For US journalists, and not just US journalists,
- [00:54:58.039]like we're gonna go in there and figure things out,
- [00:55:00.506]but journalists from Mexico, from other parts
- [00:55:03.108]of Latin America, other parts of the world
- [00:55:05.429]who are investigative journalists,
- [00:55:07.950]to converge on Mexico to figure out
- [00:55:11.210]what's going on, because they can't do it
- [00:55:13.526]by themselves, because it's just too
- [00:55:17.069]big of a story, to figure it out.
- [00:55:21.829]They don't have the protections, obviously,
- [00:55:24.895]they're not being protected with 99 percent impunity.
- [00:55:32.839]So I wonder if it's time for a Mexico Project,
- [00:55:37.631]but that means 129 different teams would have to be,
- [00:55:44.739]the challenge, it's a nice thought,
- [00:55:49.093]but the challenge and the obstacles to creating
- [00:55:52.072]that kind of project would be enormous,
- [00:55:55.471]but I think certainly something needs to be done.
- [00:55:58.554]And with that, I would just like to
- [00:56:00.074]thank you all for coming, and for listening to
- [00:56:02.474]me talk about this subject, and I'll turn it over
- [00:56:05.606]to you for questions, if you have any.
- [00:56:08.847](audience applause)
- [00:56:11.589]Okay, so the first part of your question
- [00:56:13.450]was about the asylum, the journalists who
- [00:56:16.067]are seeking asylum in the United States,
- [00:56:18.342]or other countries.
- [00:56:19.765]They're at least a dozen or so who have
- [00:56:22.783]fled, that's sort of one response, is fleeing the country
- [00:56:26.906]because they've been threatened,
- [00:56:28.927]and trying to seek asylum in the United States,
- [00:56:32.358]and some journalists are trying to seek asylum
- [00:56:34.906]in countries such as Germany, Spain,
- [00:56:38.127]and they have a very tough, it's not an easy
- [00:56:43.727]open and shut case, because they have to
- [00:56:46.287]prove that if they go back, it's like every other
- [00:56:50.165]asylum case, you have to prove that you're
- [00:56:52.182]gonna really, you possibly could be killed if
- [00:56:55.045]you go back, and it is a politically-driven,
- [00:56:59.938]motivated threat, right.
- [00:57:02.482]So there have been a few cases where journalist
- [00:57:04.724]have been granted asylum, Carlos Spector
- [00:57:08.591]is an attorney in El Paso who's got several
- [00:57:12.131]of these cases, and he's been successful in
- [00:57:15.530]a few, and not in others.
- [00:57:18.549]And the other part of your question is
- [00:57:22.127]related to the remind me again, 'cause I went
- [00:57:26.583]off on a tangent there.
- [00:57:28.430]I was wondering if your research
- [00:57:31.247]has demonstrated, or you know,
- [00:57:33.887]are these (mumbles) directly related to what--
- [00:57:36.650]Okay, yes, so the question is,
- [00:57:38.533]They seem to be (mumbles) that,
- [00:57:41.238]you know (mumbles).
- [00:57:43.626]Right, so the question, it's a great question,
- [00:57:46.106]like why are the journalists getting murdered,
- [00:57:48.506]is their murder and the motive behind it
- [00:57:53.150]related to what they're covering,
- [00:57:55.370]and who they're covering?
- [00:57:58.645]And the difficult part of this is,
- [00:58:00.725]I'm gonna get back to the impunity question is,
- [00:58:05.087]if you have a shoddy investigation that never
- [00:58:10.527]leads to trial, you can't answer that question.
- [00:58:15.167]We have, we can say that a higher percentage
- [00:58:23.407]of journalists who are killed were covering crime,
- [00:58:27.226]and covering politics, right, so those seem to be
- [00:58:32.207]factors that make them more vulnerable.
- [00:58:35.909]We also see when journalists publish and
- [00:58:39.509]write more critical stories, that makes them
- [00:58:42.970]more vulnerable, they're more likely to get killed.
- [00:58:46.671]But to say that x percentage of journalists are
- [00:58:50.472]being killed because of their perpetrators,
- [00:58:53.311]because of the investigations that they were doing
- [00:58:56.095]related to their work is very difficult.
- [00:59:03.599]So what happens is, for example,
- [00:59:05.738]these investigations happen on a local level, right.
- [00:59:12.122]Even though there's a federal crime in place
- [00:59:15.959]right now, if you attack a journalist or
- [00:59:19.583]a human rights worker, it's considered a federal crime.
- [00:59:25.578]But these crimes are first investigated on
- [00:59:27.674]a state level, and the state police are notorious
- [00:59:31.877]for being very corrupt, and doing very shoddy work.
- [00:59:35.498]So they'll go in there, tamper with the evidence,
- [00:59:39.818]the evidence is not admissible by the time they
- [00:59:43.098]get to that stage, and so it never even
- [00:59:45.835]moves on to the federal level, if that makes any sense.
- [00:59:55.242]And let me just say that here's the difficult
- [00:59:57.205]thing with Mexico and in other countries,
- [01:00:00.011]you have these laws that have been into place,
- [01:00:04.410]so the federal crime, if you were to attack a
- [01:00:08.203]journalist or a human rights worker, there is also
- [01:00:10.607]this federal mechanism that you talked about
- [01:00:14.474]to protect journalists that has been put into
- [01:00:17.685]place, and it has been in place now for the
- [01:00:21.183]last two or three years, which would help to protect,
- [01:00:24.943]create a whole protection mechanism for everything
- [01:00:27.887]from moving the journalist, to having guards
- [01:00:31.684]and things like that.
- [01:00:33.431]But these things that are happening at
- [01:00:36.729]the federal level are not
- [01:00:38.874]really, they're not having a positive influence
- [01:00:45.409]to the extent that I think people would like
- [01:00:48.895]on the local level, because you've got the
- [01:00:52.218]laws here on the federal level, and then on
- [01:00:54.373]the ground circumstances, on what I would call
- [01:00:57.317]the peripheral towns in rural areas.
- [01:01:05.224]So we published a monograph in,
- [01:01:10.019]it's called Journalism Monographs,
- [01:01:13.535]looking at that question of national organizations
- [01:01:17.514]and international organizations that have
- [01:01:20.373]come in and tried to either,
- [01:01:23.855]provide all kinds of support, from monitoring to
- [01:01:27.295]one of the big things that they are working
- [01:01:32.095]to do is just being, shaming the government into,
- [01:01:38.509]like on an international level,
- [01:01:40.255]like look, you have these great laws,
- [01:01:43.455]but your track record is obviously
- [01:01:45.984]far from stellar, so you have the UN
- [01:01:50.751]that has come in, and they have these investigations,
- [01:01:54.213]and called out the Mexican government
- [01:01:56.975]for kind of letting things slide, and not really
- [01:02:02.837]doing something about the problem,
- [01:02:07.215]but in some ways, it's still early.
- [01:02:11.615]It's only been a few years, but at the
- [01:02:15.157]same time, there's been a lot of
- [01:02:16.719]criticism that they haven't been that effective.
- [01:02:20.413]I mean, they've been effective in terms
- [01:02:22.015]of getting the legislation in place
- [01:02:23.973]that wasn't in place before, but we have not
- [01:02:28.906]seen, if you're just looking at the
- [01:02:31.087]number of aggressions and the number of people
- [01:02:33.928]who were being killed, that hasn't gone down.
- [01:02:38.570]Sure, so the question is, if the federal mechanisms
- [01:02:44.207]or the laws that are in place in the
- [01:02:46.549]federal level, what can people do on the
- [01:02:49.221]ground in more of a local level, and what are
- [01:02:51.265]they doing in terms of maybe groups or
- [01:02:53.046]the individual journalists, and that's kind
- [01:02:56.533]of what our research looks at.
- [01:02:58.853]So there has been a myriad of responses,
- [01:03:01.514]from journalists seeking asylum,
- [01:03:04.151]to journalists, remarkably leaving the profession
- [01:03:08.895]is not frequently one of the responses.
- [01:03:13.877]Other responses include journalists working together,
- [01:03:18.013]teaming up, and working with other journalists
- [01:03:21.411]in the same market, or even working with
- [01:03:24.132]journalists who are from the United States,
- [01:03:26.671]and either going to stories with them,
- [01:03:29.615]so that there's sort of strength in numbers
- [01:03:32.335]and they're protected, at least they have
- [01:03:35.170]witnesses there if something were to happen.
- [01:03:37.973]In some cases, journalists will send information
- [01:03:40.933]across the border, so that the story can get out
- [01:03:43.413]on an international level.
- [01:03:46.753]You have journalists who wear bulletproof vests,
- [01:03:52.506]journalists who wear disguises to try to,
- [01:03:58.949]so that they're not going to be identified,
- [01:04:01.930]journalists who make sure they dress like
- [01:04:04.650]journalists would, and not like somebody who
- [01:04:08.351]might have ties to organized crime.
- [01:04:12.373]So for example, we have a journalist
- [01:04:14.853]we have a journalist we interview who said,
- [01:04:17.113]"I'm always gonna have my notebook,
- [01:04:19.034]"and I'm gonna wear Converse shoes,
- [01:04:21.091]"my converse shoes," because somebody who's
- [01:04:23.493]connected usually to an organized crime,
- [01:04:26.490]you're probably not gonna see them wearing,
- [01:04:28.847]I don't know, that's the generalization,
- [01:04:30.527]that's what he's doing.
- [01:04:32.128]So it's very individualized in terms of how
- [01:04:35.319]one journalist would respond.
- [01:04:38.682]The other thing that they're doing is creating
- [01:04:40.762]groups, like the one that I mentioned,
- [01:04:42.719]the Red de Periodistas in Juárez,
- [01:04:46.274]and then there's an international level organization
- [01:04:48.469]that actually was created before that one,
- [01:04:51.349]it was the national organization that
- [01:04:53.505]inspired the Juárez journalists network,
- [01:04:57.066]and that is in Mexico City.
- [01:05:01.386]So there have been a lot of these sort
- [01:05:03.223]of grassroots journalism advocacy groups
- [01:05:06.410]formed, so they are trying to do what they can,
- [01:05:12.390]and there are several groups that monitor
- [01:05:16.614]the attacks against journalists, and that's why
- [01:05:21.381]you would see some disparities in the numbers,
- [01:05:24.447]like Committee to Protect Journalists,
- [01:05:27.151]which is based in the United States,
- [01:05:29.258]will only count the murder if they can,
- [01:05:35.018]according to their methodology,
- [01:05:37.258]have substantial evidence that the journalist
- [01:05:42.394]was murdered, the murder was related to the work.
- [01:05:47.674]And as I mentioned earlier, that's problematic,
- [01:05:51.319]right, so their numbers are extremely low,
- [01:05:54.081]and there's been some criticism about
- [01:05:55.613]that fact that they're so low,
- [01:05:57.656]I mean their numbers are like in the 50s,
- [01:05:59.962]versus like, 129.
- [01:06:02.794]And that number I used from the
- [01:06:05.130]Nation Commission of Human Rights in Mexico City.
- [01:06:11.239]Yeah, you can ask that question,
- [01:06:14.038]so the murders are still happening, right.
- [01:06:17.683]So I think what they are attempting to do
- [01:06:21.205]with networks like this is improve training,
- [01:06:23.866]this is one of the things that the
- [01:06:25.981]Juárez journalists network, for example, is doing.
- [01:06:29.082]So in a community such a Juárez,
- [01:06:32.341]or other communities around the country,
- [01:06:35.343]you would have journalists who aren't,
- [01:06:37.205]especially in the peripheral areas,
- [01:06:39.461]not very well trained, how to cover crime,
- [01:06:42.703]or how to cover a kind of sticky
- [01:06:48.944]sort of issue and protect yourself,
- [01:06:51.375]so they're learning how to protect themselves
- [01:06:54.474]digitally in digital security,
- [01:06:57.157]they're getting training on how to protect
- [01:06:59.658]themselves physically, how to,
- [01:07:01.359]if you're covering a riot, for example,
- [01:07:03.697]or covering a shooting, how do you respond,
- [01:07:06.720]I mean this is like combat training for them.
- [01:07:09.882]They're learning also, legal security,
- [01:07:12.106]so it's like these little incremental things
- [01:07:14.545]that are happening, where it's hard to say,
- [01:07:17.818]like are they preventing deaths,
- [01:07:20.063]maybe, in some cases.
- [01:07:23.103]They're at least decreasing their vulnerability,
- [01:07:25.764]through these type of training,
- [01:07:28.869]and I think that's one of the,
- [01:07:30.970]in terms of the effectiveness, I don't think
- [01:07:33.893]we can say at this point, but they're trying to
- [01:07:35.850]minimize their vulnerabilities.
- [01:07:38.293]I wish I could say yes, but well,
- [01:07:42.298]Colombia for example, is a similar situation
- [01:07:48.223]to Mexico in some ways, because in Colombia,
- [01:07:56.432]before Mexico became the drug-producing,
- [01:08:00.893]drug-transporting country,
- [01:08:02.661]Colombia was more involved in that.
- [01:08:06.698]And so as a result, they had a great number
- [01:08:11.162]of journalists how were being killed in that country,
- [01:08:13.797]and they were able to create a mechanism,
- [01:08:16.698]similar to Mexico's actually,
- [01:08:19.482]Mexico's mechanism to protects journalist is
- [01:08:22.143]somewhat modeled after Colombia's so
- [01:08:24.423]the number of journalists there being killed
- [01:08:28.229]has gone down, but they're still being
- [01:08:31.418]threatened, and they're still being killed there,
- [01:08:35.503]but not to the extent that they were like,
- [01:08:38.720]ten, 20 years ago, if that helps.
- [01:08:43.866]Yeah, so I think what we're seeing is
- [01:08:46.287]when you have, whether it's through politics
- [01:08:51.495]or organized crime, when there's an increase
- [01:08:55.706]in corrupt politicians or authoritarian politics,
- [01:09:02.639]and when you have organized crime,
- [01:09:04.325]and then when you have those things together,
- [01:09:07.183]you're gonna see a spike in aggressions against journalists.
- [01:09:13.914]Well, the one, maybe this is the one percent,
- [01:09:17.042]is the case in Tijuana that I can think of
- [01:09:21.703]is one of the journalists there was killed,
- [01:09:25.226]he was working for Zeta Magazine,
- [01:09:27.786]which is a very critical newspaper,
- [01:09:32.882]has been in Tijuana for decades,
- [01:09:35.701]and Héctor Félix Miranda was killed and there was
- [01:09:39.263]an investigation and was linked to a former
- [01:09:45.391]political figure there, Hank Rhon,
- [01:09:47.909]and Hank Rhon was not put in prison,
- [01:09:52.069]but it was thought that people he was working with
- [01:09:56.431]people with him were imprisoned,
- [01:09:58.948]so that's like one case that I can think of.
- [01:10:02.905]In terms of the question of journalists of color
- [01:10:07.866]is an interesting one in Mexico,
- [01:10:10.268]because I think it's more about the journalists
- [01:10:16.106]who are more indigenous would have sometimes
- [01:10:21.412]less protections, or would have less privilege
- [01:10:24.794]than journalists who have less indigenous phenotype,
- [01:10:35.131]you know, or even roots in indigenous communities,
- [01:10:38.598]so I think that's where that happens.
- [01:10:42.394]And certainly, I think in the United States journalists
- [01:10:45.753]of color are more targeted, although I don't have
- [01:10:48.994]the figures offhand, I just assume that it's
- [01:10:51.814]a reflection of the general population,
- [01:10:54.501]and journalists are just a subgroup of
- [01:10:58.703]the general population.
- [01:11:02.514]Right, and I think that was one of my points,
- [01:11:04.997]we're not talking about national level journalist here,
- [01:11:07.653]we're talking for the most part,
- [01:11:09.413]journalists who are who are working the periphery,
- [01:11:11.789]in small towns, who have less economic resources,
- [01:11:15.226]who have less training, who get paid less
- [01:11:19.129]and whose, not that Televisa does a great job
- [01:11:23.731]protecting its employees or pays them a
- [01:11:25.842]great deal of money, but they're in Mexico City,
- [01:11:28.229]and they do pay them more than somebody who's
- [01:11:30.111]working in Juárez, for example.
- [01:11:33.098]And yes, that's a very good point,
- [01:11:37.674]and it's something that I thought I was
- [01:11:39.434]trying to convey here, and with respect to
- [01:11:42.351]the role of mass media in Mexico,
- [01:11:46.671]and that's what my book, Muy Buenas Noches
- [01:11:49.109]concentrates on, so maybe you can get a
- [01:11:53.985]look at that, and also though,
- [01:11:57.727]thinking about it in a more contemporary sense,
- [01:12:00.927]Televisa is still the most-watched network
- [01:12:05.269]in Mexico, they have the 70 percent market share
- [01:12:09.924]and then maybe Azteca comes in,
- [01:12:12.449]is second, kind of a distant second
- [01:12:15.034]with like 30 percent of the market share
- [01:12:17.070]of commercial TV.
- [01:12:19.645]So you're saying that maybe TV is,
- [01:12:22.426]their goal is to keep people at home,
- [01:12:27.247]and having them watching this gripping narrative,
- [01:12:30.346]and yeah, but for what reason,
- [01:12:33.855]and the reason is they want to get more viewers
- [01:12:36.628]to get more money, so it's an economics-based model,
- [01:12:40.527]they're just, it's all about money, really,
- [01:12:43.727]an not necessarily, in my opinion,
- [01:12:47.759]and based on my research, state control.
- [01:12:50.618]One of the side effects happens to be,
- [01:12:53.359]one of the consequences and results could be
- [01:12:56.516]state control, you know, like you have
- [01:12:58.622]people at home and not wandering into the streets,
- [01:13:01.183]and they're watching TV, they're not going
- [01:13:03.716]to be protesting or whatnot, that's an upside
- [01:13:08.453]for maybe people in power, in political office,
- [01:13:13.910]and that's how these interests between
- [01:13:17.380]the economic interests and these political
- [01:13:19.971]interests line up.
- [01:13:22.100]One thing that I didn't point out,
- [01:13:24.420]that I didn't really have time to go into
- [01:13:27.140]in my talk was the question of ownership,
- [01:13:32.660]so made me think about the question of ownership,
- [01:13:34.838]and some of these papers have kind of a
- [01:13:39.226]long family history, like El Mañana,
- [01:13:41.866]El Mañana de Nuevo Laredo, El Mañana de Reynosa
- [01:13:46.359]and Matamoros, and Mañana de Nuevo Laredo,
- [01:13:49.877]just south of Laredo, Texas, has been there
- [01:13:53.004]for more than 90 years.
- [01:13:55.743]And other papers have not been there as long,
- [01:13:59.786]and owned sometimes by people who have political interests,
- [01:14:05.882]certain political as well as economic interests,
- [01:14:09.306]and for the most part, this is something that
- [01:14:12.186]came out of our research, is journalists in
- [01:14:14.970]these smaller organizations, working for
- [01:14:18.508]these smaller organizations feel that they
- [01:14:21.226]are not getting support from the media owners.
- [01:14:26.756]In some cases, they're not getting enough
- [01:14:28.858]support from even their own editors,
- [01:14:31.222]so you have situations where a journalist
- [01:14:33.567]gets threatened, goes back to the newsroom,
- [01:14:37.021]and tells the editor and his or her colleagues
- [01:14:43.583]about hey, I just got threatened,
- [01:14:45.440]and they say, oh, pff, you're always complaining,
- [01:14:48.186]or you're talking to the wrong people,
- [01:14:51.904]you should keep your nose clean,
- [01:14:53.908]so they're often put in and looked at negatively,
- [01:14:58.527]even among their own peers, and there's a lot of
- [01:15:02.506]sort of distrust sometimes, in the newsroom.
- [01:15:08.831]So solidarity is happening in some places,
- [01:15:12.666]but there's in other cases, there's distrust,
- [01:15:15.850]and I think one of the things that needs
- [01:15:18.831]to happen, and we're talking about,
- [01:15:21.188]well, if these federal laws aren't working,
- [01:15:24.695]and these federal mechanisms aren't working,
- [01:15:26.276]and where are the owners in all of this?
- [01:15:29.514]These are the people who are putting their
- [01:15:31.732]papers, or online publications, or radio publications
- [01:15:37.994]together every day, where are you,
- [01:15:40.618]that's my question, and there needs to be more
- [01:15:44.474]research done in that area.
- [01:15:47.984]We haven't done it yet, but that's I think,
- [01:15:51.151]a critical piece of all this,
- [01:15:53.927]that owners are kind of, take a back seat
- [01:15:59.791]with some of this, and just kind of will
- [01:16:02.530]wring their hands and say, well, yeah,
- [01:16:04.648]that's too bad.
- [01:16:06.970]You know, Proceso Magazine,
- [01:16:08.991]for example, you mentioned Proceso Magazine,
- [01:16:10.996]had one of its correspondents, several years ago,
- [01:16:13.999]one of its correspondents Regina Martínez,
- [01:16:18.849]was killed in Veracruz, she wasn't a national level
- [01:16:22.895]journalist, but she was working for a national
- [01:16:26.692]level publication, and Proceso has a nice photo
- [01:16:31.818]of Regina that say, "We remember you,
- [01:16:34.548]"your murder has not been solved," but other than that,
- [01:16:41.450]I don't see them doing much else, right.
- [01:16:47.412]So, I'm glad you kind of reminded me to
- [01:16:50.052]bring that up.
- [01:16:54.694]Oh, so the public, sort of what's their response been?
- [01:16:57.732]The question is, what has the public's response been,
- [01:17:01.172]or you know, when a journalist is killed,
- [01:17:04.175]Subscribers or readers.
- [01:17:07.209]Subscribers or readers,
- [01:17:09.316]well, some of these papers don't have real,
- [01:17:14.688]you know, a huge circulation, so the way
- [01:17:19.091]that it works is they'll sell the newspapers
- [01:17:21.793]on the street, or in some cases,
- [01:17:24.054]these are newspapers that are free,
- [01:17:26.401]they're so small, or just online,
- [01:17:29.318]so I think it's a really interesting question also,
- [01:17:35.416]but not so much necessarily about subscribers,
- [01:17:37.564]but about the public in general,
- [01:17:39.404]the they're really not that engaged with
- [01:17:41.960]this question of violence against journalists,
- [01:17:44.385]they're like.
- [01:17:45.800]I'll just tell you a quick anecdote about
- [01:17:48.204]Gregorio Jiménez, remember, he was the 10th
- [01:17:50.951]journalist under Duarte who was killed in 2014.
- [01:17:55.276]I went to protest, when I was living in Mexico City
- [01:17:58.291]in 2014, shortly after his murder.
- [01:18:03.039]Journalists got together, organized a protest,
- [01:18:05.974]they went to the Angel of Independence,
- [01:18:08.140]where many protests are held, and many times,
- [01:18:11.478]there could be easily hundreds of thousands
- [01:18:14.038]of people, depending on what the cause is,
- [01:18:16.262]teachers, something related to the healthcare system,
- [01:18:21.958]or it's not uncommon in Mexico City,
- [01:18:24.220]a city of 22 million people,
- [01:18:26.975]to have a hundred thousand people at a protest.
- [01:18:30.438]At Gregorio Jiménez's protest,
- [01:18:32.758]or the protest in response to his murder,
- [01:18:35.199]there were a couple of hundred people,
- [01:18:40.422]which was shocking to me, which was extremely telling,
- [01:18:43.089]for me as a researcher, I thought,
- [01:18:45.452]where are all these people, where are they?
- [01:18:48.349]I have to point out that the day before
- [01:18:51.217]the protest, Chapo was caught, El Chapo Guzmán,
- [01:18:56.498]Joaquín Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel
- [01:19:01.277]was picked up, so a lot of journalists,
- [01:19:03.790]a lot of foreign journalists were covering that,
- [01:19:06.274]so they weren't there.
- [01:19:07.849]But I also think there was some level of,
- [01:19:09.874]I'm thinking about when I mentioned that
- [01:19:11.714]when a journalist is a recipient of an attack,
- [01:19:15.294]the people are the recipient of the attack as well,
- [01:19:18.322]because imagine knowing and living in Mexico,
- [01:19:22.664]you know that all these journalists are
- [01:19:24.605]receiving threats, being the targets of violence,
- [01:19:30.824]I'm sure that goes through many people's minds,
- [01:19:34.648]like I don't want to be out there with them,
- [01:19:38.542]I'm gonna be seen fighting for this cause
- [01:19:43.598]that possibly could put me and my family at risk,
- [01:19:49.817]so there's that element too.
- [01:19:51.235]But I think it's more about the fact that
- [01:19:53.276]the public is not really a,
- [01:19:56.158]they're not that, they don't see the value in
- [01:19:59.372]journalists, so this is again, a historic question,
- [01:20:05.011]because over a century, the press has been
- [01:20:09.669]somewhat weak, and not really stuck up for the public,
- [01:20:13.833]why should the public stick up for it?
- [01:20:16.851]That's I think, a complicated question that
- [01:20:19.609]needs to be looked at a little bit more deeply.
- [01:20:24.067]Yeah, well I think that's great,
- [01:20:25.870]to hear stories like that, where people,
- [01:20:28.147]artists and activists are trying to call attention
- [01:20:33.309]to the issue.
- [01:20:35.369]I guess my point is, there's not a ground swell
- [01:20:38.291]of outrage, and that's partly what I think
- [01:20:44.174]it would take to change the situation,
- [01:20:47.977]to really get the public behind the journalists.
- [01:20:53.083]I'm kind of concerned about the sort of
- [01:20:58.334]ambivalence or apathy in this country,
- [01:21:01.251]with respect to attacks against the press,
- [01:21:05.769]and that's why I kind of linked it to
- [01:21:08.451]what's happening in Mexico,
- [01:21:10.206]because it's an important institution,
- [01:21:12.947]and if you don't have civil society backing it up,
- [01:21:17.827]and calling for a strong news media,
- [01:21:21.785]we can easily go down a more dangerous road, I think.
- [01:21:28.158]We're out of time, so.
- [01:21:30.846](audience applause)
- [01:21:32.622]Thank you.
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