Journalists in Mexico Fear Cartels — And Facebook

foreign jesus aguilar starts working when the sun goes down that's when tijuana is at its most violent [Music] foreign aguilar learned the craft from his mentor margarito martinez a veteran crime photographer in one of the most violent cities in the world my name is martinez and aguilar covered crime scenes together and had a buddy system to keep each other safe [Music] martinez was a constant presence on the streets of tijuana until january 17th when he was shot dead outside his home margarita [Music] margarita [Music] [Music] [Music] they there's a report of a shooting in colonial urena which is a neighborhood that's about 10 minutes away from here [Music] is waiting for more details location things like that but he's on his way there now to to see what he can find okay shooting jesus is live right now on facebook there's already hundreds of comments from what i can see mostly people saying hello jesus what's up where is this happening where is this mexico is the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist outside of an active war zone that's been true for years but the problem has reached a fever pitch eight reporters have been killed in 2022 so far already more than were killed all of last year it's so dangerous to report in mexico that some journalists almost expect to die in 2019 lodes maldonado also from tijuana addressed mexico's president directly to ask for help [Music] ayuda she was murdered in january the same week as martinez attacks on journalists are a part of mexico's larger problem with narco-violence in turf wars between rival cartels and corrupt political bosses reporters are often caught in the middle a city like tijuana was once ruled by a single cartel today it's contested territory in that struggle for power information is a crucial weapon so what you have in a city like this like tijuana which is on the border of huge strategic importance to organized crime is an ongoing information war between different factions of different groups who sort of instrumentalize or weaponize different flows of information against one another that can mean anything from legitimate journalists who get bought off by the cartels to anonymous facebook pages sharing information about violence and crime in the city millions of mexicans don't have access to the internet but they get facebook on their phones for free so that's where they turn for their news in tijuana alone there are more than a dozen anonymous facebook accounts that share gruesome dispatches of crime in the city we blurred the faces here but they publish uncensored the names and faces of alleged gang members these pages purport to expose the criminal underworld but more conventional reporters suspect they're really instruments that cartels use to out their rivals the death of martinez was directly connected to these anonymous facebook pages and to a social media influencer and former police officer named angel pena on december 13th pena recorded martinez during a facebook live and accused him of secretly running two pages including one called tijuana in guerra or tijuana at warehouses martinez had nothing to do with the pages but just the accusation was enough to put his life in danger [Music] he immediately reached out to sonia deanda a veteran reporter in tijuana the kind of other journalists often turn to for help criminals the day martinez died a group of reporters gathered at the scene of his murder then pena showed up as okay pena has previously denied any connection to martinez's death he did not respond to our requests for comment the investigation into the murder of martinez remains open in mexico organized crime operates hand in hand with the state that means criminals and politicians can silence journalists with near total impunity that according to advocates for freedom of the press is the core of the problem uh [Music] in mexico a the government's failure to protect journalists goes all the way to the top president andres manuel lopez obrador is notoriously hostile to the press and attacks on journalists have gone up 85 under his watch so we're about to go into the president's daily press conference on the one hand it gives the impression of transparency because there aren't many heads of state who have press conferences every single day every single morning but then you realize that this constitutes 100 of his public interactions with the press he never gives interviews it's very difficult to actually challenge him in detail on any specific questions he basically just holds court often berates the press in front of him and that's the extent of the relationship between the presidents is [Music] [Music] is a so i just left this somewhat tense exchange with the president and instantly literally within minutes my twitter is flooded with hostility from supporters of the president um including some fairly personal attacks pictures of me comments about my background so there are a lot of these calling me chad yotero like bought and sold journalists so people are claiming that i am sort of acting on behalf of shadowy interests people saying that i have an agenda so like a coup agenda that my intention is to i suppose undemocratically and illegally depose the president of mexico for me as a as a privileged journalist american journalist operating from the united states this is not um something to really worry about and it's by far the lowest level of aggression that a journalist can feel nevertheless it's remarkable how immediate and coordinated it was the mexican government does have a system for protecting journalists who are under threat a tiny minority those the government considers most at risk get round-the-clock bodyguards it's a band-aid solution but it has saved lives including that of ignacio santiago who survived seven armed attacks on his life including one three months ago santiago is one of few reporters in this part of oaxaca willing to cover crime using his own name is is is foreign [Music] [Music] practically a we just left the first crime scene of the night turned out to be a murder scene one gunshot victim while we were at that scene there was a second report of another murder nearby this one with apparently two victims [Music] three reporters here there's jesus and two other guys who work for a different media organization [Music] they're all shooting live videos on their phones for the multiple different facebook pages that cover crime in tijuana and also taking photographs of professional cameras to sell to newspapers [Music] the very next day tijuana guerra one of the facebook pages margarito martinez was falsely accused of running covered the same story in a different way we were just here last night with jesus aguilar the photojournalist when we arrived the police had already taped off the crime scene jesus and a couple of other reporters who were here stood behind the police tape took photographs from a distance um they you know couldn't get close enough to show you what had actually happened but today less than 24 hours later one of these sketchy murky anonymous facebook pages that operates in tijuana has incredibly detailed and incredibly graphic information about the incident including photographs of the two murdered people and remarkably very detailed information about who the dead person was this is the kind of information that reporters like jesus specifically decide not to publish because doing so is incredibly dangerous and it can get you killed but there are still anonymous operations platforms that are not only willing to but actively want to publish this information the comments show you how much people enjoy this kind of content you have someone saying other news platforms don't give you the full story they just scare people another one says i love the news stories where they kill these dudes it's the best that could happen to them this is what the news looks like in tijuana and in every violent contested city in mexico after weeks of exchanging messages the administrators of tijuana guerra agreed to speak with us this is the first time they've agreed to an interview with a conventional media outlet that interview has to happen on their turf basically it has to happen on facebook in writing in an exchange with their website so that they remain anonymous and so that there's basically no chance of finding out who they are [Music] so i just asked how many people are behind these pages is it just one person or are there several he said it's a team of three people so i said do you go out in the field do you go out report or do you just work from you know through computers we get our facts from sources and contacts that we have in dependencies which basically means government offices it says before we post a story we investigate first so i just directly confronted this person with what everybody says about this website which is that it's affiliated with or works on behalf of organized crime and that the information that they publishes is meant to jeopardize the rivals of the people who paid them the answer is very interesting although not entirely persuasive they're basically saying no that's what everybody says about us but it's not true if there are certain names certain criminals or certain cartels that show up more than others in the information that we publish it's just because they commit the worst most atrocious crime [Music] so i asked this person about the specific crime scene that we covered in el solero and i just asked them where did this information come from he's not really answering the question though or you know he's saying that they get the photos anonymously still being sort of slippery with regards to where they get their information whether it's you know from anonymous sources or from or from specific sources that they have inside of government agencies a lot of reporters in tijuana say that what you do what this facebook page does puts them in danger and that margarito's death is the proof of that so what do you think and it says we've never picked any kind of fight with any reporter even though they offend us even though they insult us we just ignore them it says they're angry at us because we got a lot of followers in a very short time and without paying facebook for publicity we always get the news before them okay so i just said there are a lot of people who say margarito martinez died because his murderers believed that he was the person behind this website he says that was something very unfortunate we had no connection with that man we didn't even know each other that attack against him made very clear that we are doing our jobs very well and that the narcos are very upset with our work it's kind of disturbing that this person is almost proud of the fact that margarito martinez was killed because he was mistakenly believed to be the person behind this website [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] california i'm michael lairmonth 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Channel: VICE News

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Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020, murder, drug cartel, sinaloa cartel, drug cartels mexico, world news, drug wars, mexico, journalist, freedom of press, journalism, murders documentary, vice news, vwn, vice world news, facebook, anonymous facebook group, murders, social media, drug cartels, mexico cartels, drug war, vice world news anonymous

Id: KfTZKtA3aWk

Length: 26min 41sec (1601 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2022