Mexico

There have been fewer attacks on press freedom since the last meeting.
For the first time there were no attempts to kill journalists. But there have been arbitrary detentions on charges of defamation, pressures on reporters who refuse to disclose their sources and other actions against press sites and workers.
The basis of the reports is a structural problem in the Mexican judicial system and an obvious weakness in the legal support system for the practice of journalism.
In February, the IAPA reiterated to President Vicente Fox the demand that crimes against journalists be prosecuted by federal courts. This demand had been made in August in a letter signed by IAPA leaders and several Mexican publishers after a conference in Tijuana, Baja California, called to draw attention to attacks on journalists in the area near the border with the United States.
President Fox and the government made a positive response saying they would look for the necessary judicial methods to adjudicate murders of journalists in federal jurisdiction.
A growing number of journalists have been taken to court on criminal charges of defamation of public officials. This departs from the idea that such trials should be in civil courts and only when it can be proven that in publishing the news the journalist intended to cause harm, that he knew the information was false or that he acted with obvious negligence in verifying it
At our request, government officials have begun a judicial study with the aim of removing defamation charges against journalists from criminal jurisdiction.
It is also necessary to pass specific legislation protecting journalists’ confidentiality and banning harassment of them.
The country has a Federal Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information which was formally decreed last June. It was inspired by an IAPA seminar in February, 2001.
Seven states have passed laws on this subject, and nine have similar bills pending. There has been a positive trend following IAPA conferences and there is an effort now to hold a conference on journalistic confidentiality.
The murders of journalists Héctor Félix Miranda, on April 29, 1988, and Víctor Manuel Oropeza, on July 3, 1991; the shooting of Jesús Blancornelas, in November 1997, and other crimes have not been solved.
There are doubts about the death of José Miranda Virgen, a columnist of the daily Imagen in Veracruz state on October 16, 2002. The police investigation concluded that he died in an explosion in his house caused by a gas leak, but his relatives said it could have been an attack because of his editorial stance. The authorities did not investigate this aspect.
The following attacks on reporters have been reported:
-In November, the newspaper La Jornada in Mexico City reported that some of its reporters were harassed by officials of the federal prosecutor’s office who sought to force them to disclose their sources for several published articles. A journalist of the daily El Universal was summoned for the same reason. The National Human Rights Commission said the case is a type of government persecution against these journalists.
-On February 4 agents of the northern state Chihuahua arrested journalist Isabel Arvide on charges of defamation brought by the state prosecutor Jesús Solís Silva. Arvide was in Chihuahua to appear before a judge because she had been freed on bail in a previous defamation charge brought by a local publisher. The journalist was again released on bail on February 5.
-On March 10, Adriana Varillas of the newspaper La Voz del Caribe of Cancun was detained briefly by judicial police who illegally pressed her to disclose the sources of an article on corruption.

58th IAPA General Assembly
JW Marriott Hotel & Stellaris Casino
Lima, Peru
October 26-29, 2002