Full Description
Mott KTA Journalism and Mass Communication Research Award, Kappa Tau Alpha
Tankard Book Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)
Knudson Latin America Prize, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)
Since 2000, more than 150 journalists have been killed in Mexico. Today the country is one of the most dangerous in the world in which to be a reporter. In Surviving Mexico, Celeste GonzÁlez de Bustamante and Jeannine E. Relly examine the networks of political power, business interests, and organized crime that threaten and attack Mexican journalists, who forge ahead despite the risks.
Amid the crackdown on drug cartels, overall violence in Mexico has increased, and journalists covering the conflict have grown more vulnerable. But it is not just criminal groups that want reporters out of the way. Government forces also attack journalists in order to shield corrupt authorities and the very criminals they are supposed to be fighting. Meanwhile some news organizations, enriched by their ties to corrupt government officials and criminal groups, fail to support their employees. In some cases, journalists must wait for a "green light" to publish not from their editors but from organized crime groups. Despite seemingly insurmountable constraints, journalists have turned to one another and to their communities to resist pressures and create their own networks of resilience. Drawing on a decade of rigorous research in Mexico, GonzÁlez de Bustamante and Relly explain how journalists have become their own activists and how they hold those in power accountable.
Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Mexico's Peripheries as a Case Study for Violence against Journalists around the World
Part I. The Past, Place, and Politics of Violence against Journalists
1. How Journalists Became Their Own Activists: A Historical Perspective
2. Place Matters: The Promise and Limits of the Periphery
3. Moving Targets and Perpetrators: Mercurial Violence, Ownership, and Changing Journalism Practices
Part II. Murdering the Messengers and Controlling the Message
4. Red Light, Green Light: Strategies of Resistance among Journalists in the Peripheries
5. The Personal and Familial Toll: Violence, Trauma, and Resilience
6. Social Media, Digital Insecurity, and Journalists' Safety
Part III. Structured and Unstructured Attempts to Save Journalism and Journalists
7. Attempts to Intervene
8. State Actors, Violence, and Resilience among Organized Crime Groups
9. Women on the Frontline: Resistance and Resilience in Ciudad JuÁrez
Conclusion: Toward a More Secure Journalism Future
Appendix: Journalists Killed in Mexico 2000-2020, by Presidential Administration
Notes
References
Index
