WHERE COVERING A WEDDING CAN BRING DEATH THREATS

The north of Mexico is under siege. Gang wars for control of the drug
market and cocaine routes to the United States took at least 2,000
lives in Mexico last year, most of them in border states. Serious
journalism is also a victim.

Working as a reporter has become a very dangerous job in Mexico.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, seven Mexican
reporters were killed last year, their work the confirmed or
suspected reason. This count moves Mexico past Colombia -- a country
where journalists vanish with terrifying regularity.

Mexico's count is still much lower than Iraq's record of 39 murders
in 2006. But it is high enough to accomplish what the traffickers
want. Widespread intimidation has brought coverage of drug
trafficking virtually to a halt.

Among the most prominent dead are Roberto Javier Mora Garcia, the
highly respected editor of El Manana in the border town of Nuevo
Laredo, who was stabbed to death in March 2004. Alfredo Jimenez Mota,
the trafficking expert at El Imparcial in Hermosillo, Sonora, has
been missing since April 2005. Last year, Enrique Perea Quintanilla,
editor of the Chihuahua magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad, which
reported on unsolved crimes, was killed.

At respected newspapers across the north, even innocuous decisions --
publishing photos of traffickers at a wedding, for example -- can
bring death threats. Reporters have been kidnapped briefly by drug
gangs as a warning. The drug cartels pay off other reporters, who
warn colleagues not to touch certain subjects or print certain names
or pictures.

Newspapers, many of which depend heavily on government advertising,
also face financial pressure from local officials and business
leaders to tamp down the reporting. Some officials are on the take;
others simply do not want bad news to scare away business and
tourism. Northern Mexico is rife with violence, fear and corruption
- -- except in its newspapers. "Before, we focused on writing good
stories that went beyond official statements on organized crime and
drug trafficking," said the editor of one northern paper. "Now we are
worried about taking care of ourselves."

Shortly after Mr. Jimenez Mota disappeared, El Imparcial announced
that conditions did not permit investigations into drug trafficking,
and it would no longer do them. Nor would papers owned by the same
family in Tijuana and Mexicali. El Manana stopped investigating
organized crime after Mr. Mora Garcia's death. Then last February,
gunmen broke into the newspaper, firing shots and throwing a grenade,
seriously wounding one reporter. The shooting followed a high-profile
international conference on journalism in Nuevo Laredo. After the
attack, the paper announced that it was no longer going to publish
anything about drug trafficking.

At most papers today, coverage of organized crime is limited to
printing unsigned stories quoting official police information after a
killing, and each killing is treated as an isolated event. Some will
not even do this, preferring complete silence.

Last February, Vicente Fox, the president then, appointed a special
federal prosecutor to investigate crimes against journalists. This
was a needed statement of support, and a way to take such cases out
of the hands of state courts, where traffickers enjoy impunity. But
the prosecutor's resources and mandate are limited. He has not yet
brought an indictment.

Given the dangers, the media silence is understandable, especially
when corruption is so rampant that there is no reason to expect
change. "You have to ask yourself," said the editor, "is it worth it?"

In Colombia, where for decades journalists have faced threats from
cocaine gangs and armed groups on the left and right, reporters
sometimes are able to do real journalism by banding together. Mexico
tried that -- for a while.

In August 2005, the Inter-American Press Association -- a nonprofit
group that encourages good journalism in Latin America -- convened a
meeting of about 30 border editors and publishers in Hermosillo.

They organized a group of journalists from different papers to work
together on investigations. Their first story -- on the disappearance
of Mr. Jimenez Mota -- was published and broadcast on the same day by
70 different outlets across Mexico -- with no reporters' names attached.

But the effort has since foundered without sufficient money and
leadership from the large papers in Mexico City and from
international groups. Collaboration would also require a level of
trust and a culture of investigative reporting very scarce in Mexico.
In the north, it grows more rare by the day.