[su_label type=”info”]Editorial[/su_label]

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By continuing to fail to protect journalists, the Mexican government is also failing its citizens, who depend on a free (and alive) press to make informed decisions.

Though it has established mechanisms and organizations to prevent and prosecute crimes against journalists, the reality is that since 2010 only three such cases have reached conviction.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, and has a terrible record of incredible human rights abuses against its general population. Many times these abuses are actually perpetrated by elected officials, police, and other public servants.

As reporters, we are constantly reminded of the need to stay neutral and unemotional on a story. But there are extraordinary circumstances when this is not possible. This is not a story we can be objective or neutral about, and so we must issue a call to action.

We urge Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make it his priority for the remainder of his term to protect the lives of journalists. It is impossible to quickly fix a system that is overrun by corruption at all levels of government and law enforcement. But in this state of emergency, we believe there is still much room for improvement.

Mexico is a country where the lines between the government and organized crime are not only blurred, but deeply entangled. It is naive to expect a corrupt state to reform itself without any outside influence, so we urge the international community to intervene. Outside governments and human rights organizations must continue to put pressure on Peña Nieto’s administration to make improvements over the current state of things.

We urge the U.S. government to grant asylum to Mexican reporter Martin Mendez Pineda and to other journalists who are under threat. Mendez Pineda requested asylum after moving around Mexico to escape attacks. But threatening phone calls have followed him wherever he’s moved.

After a year of fearing for his life, he came to America because in Mexico, there were no more safe places left for him to run. Instead of providing safety, the United States incarcerated him at an immigration detention center and subjected him to conditions that are worse than those of many criminals. In the end, Mendez Pineda chose deportation. He’d rather continue risking his life in Mexico than to live incarcerated in the U.S. indefinitely. Our system failed him.

At El Tecolote, we try not to take for granted the freedom we have to cover topics like police brutality and the mainstreaming of white supremacy. It is hard for us to imagine that this work could get us killed if we did it just 520 miles south of where we write this.

Here, if we report on something that displeases an authority, at worse, they’ll stop answering our messages or keep us out of events. We might even get roughed up a bit by sheriff’s deputies just for taking photos and being at the wrong spot—that’s what happened to our photographers last year at City Hall. But even this type of incident is rare and it was promptly called out by many local media outlets.

Certainly all of the above are in fact press suppression tactics that should be called out. But thinking about our Mexican brothers and sisters of the press reminds us that despite these challenges, we are still privileged to have a forum where we can speak out against injustice without fearing for our lives. We are grateful that, at the end of the day, we all get to be alive and go home to our loved ones after we file this story.

Those of us practicing the necessary profession of journalism on this side of the border are quick to voice our collective outrage whenever our very own president selectively bans journalists from media briefings, or when a certain Republican Montana politician body slammed a reporter for asking questions. That same ire, unfortunately, is oftentimes missing when the murders of Mexican journalists is concerned. That needs to change.