Mexico Was 3rd Deadliest Country for Journalists in 2024, According to RSF Annual Report

Mexico has recorded five journalists killed so far in 2024, one more than the previous year, and has become the Latin American country with the highest number of deaths for carrying out journalistic work, according to an annual report released on December 12 of this year by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international non-governmental and non-profit organization of French origin, with permanent headquarters in Paris, France.

In the international NGO’s world ranking for 2024, Mexico was in third place, tied with Bangladesh – which had 5 journalist deaths – and behind the Palestinian territories, with 16, and Pakistan, with seven.

According to RSF, during the last five years, 37 journalists have been executed in Mexico, just two less than the victims in the Palestinian territories during the same period. However, for the first time in five years, the Mexican Republic is no longer the region at peace with the highest number of journalists killed.

Cases such as that of journalist Alejandro Martínez Noguez, who was killed in his government protection vehicle, accompanied by a bodyguard, demonstrate, according to an RSF spokesperson, the “fragility” of these measures and the need to strengthen them.

The non-profit organization denounced the inadequacy of state protection mechanisms, as well as the “violent and stigmatizing rhetoric” used by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

According to the NGO, when Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was a presidential candidate for the coalition “Let’s Keep Making History” – made up of the Morena, Labor (PT), and Green Mexican Ecologist (PVEM) parties – she committed to RSF to “combat impunity for crimes committed against journalists,” since the non-profit organization estimated that the Mexican government should take responsibility” for the large number of missing journalists.

RSF’s annual report records -from January 1 to December 1, 2024- that Mexico accounted for 30 percent of the disappearances of journalists worldwide, as well as 30 of the 39 missing journalists throughout the Americas.

During the government of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo -whose administration began on October 1, 2024-, three journalists have been murdered.

The journalist Mauricio Cruz Solís, who directed the digital medium Minuto x Minuto, was shot dead, around 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, in the center of the municipality of Uruapan, in Michoacán, shortly after he conducted an interview broadcast live on the social network Facebook, with Mayor Carlos Manzo Rodríguez, a member of Morena.

Patricia Ramírez González, known as Paty Bunbury, an entertainment journalist, was murdered at around 2:00 p.m. on October 30, 2024, while she was in a food stand she owned, located at 461 Gabino Barrera Street, in the La Atrevida neighborhood, in Colima, the capital of the same state.

Adriano Bachega Olvera, a 53-year-old Argentine journalist, who became a naturalized Mexican and was editor-in-chief of the news portal Diario Digital Online, was shot to death at around 9:45 a.m. on December 3, 2024, while he was driving his private car on Lázaro Cárdenas Avenue, on the border between the municipalities of Monterrey and San Pedro Garza García, in Nuevo León.

Sources: Zeta Tijuana, Cartel Insider, Cartel Insider