BORDER REPORTERS DISCUSS RISKS IN COVERAGE OF DRUG TRADE

NUEVO LAREDO -- Mexican border journalists, whose colleagues have turned up
missing or dead after covering drug violence, say they are censoring
themselves out of fear of being killed.

Reporters made the admission during a two-day meeting hosted by the
Inter-American Press Association that ended Friday.

More than 100 reporters from Mexico, the United States and other parts of
Latin America attended the meeting to discuss ways to report the news in
spite of the danger posed by Mexico's spiraling drug war.

The meeting kicked off only days after two reporters with Nuevo Laredo's El
Manana were caught in the crossfire between rival gangs, heightening the
fear of an already terrorized press.

Last year, seven Mexican reporters were killed and one disappeared.

Nuevo Laredo newspaper editors say they have been omitting the names of
some victims of violence after drug traffickers have called and threatened
reporters if the names are published.

Or sometimes, they add, they simply don't run the story.

Nuevo Laredo has been in the front lines of a bloody battle between
Mexico's top drug cartels fighting for control of its billion-dollar
smuggling routes into the United States.

So far this year, 21 people -- nearly one every day -- have been murdered
in the city of 300,000 across from Laredo, Texas. All but four of the
killings have been related to drug violence, police say.

"The goal is not to ask reporters to be martyrs, but what we want is to
share experiences and give reporters the tools to cover subjects like drug
trafficking in a responsible and objective way," said Ricardo Trotti, press
freedom director for the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association.

After its crime reporter, Alfredo Jimenez, disappeared in April, El
Imparcial dropped bylines on drug trafficking stories and required
reporters to keep editors informed of their whereabouts, said Fernando
Healy, the general director of the daily newspaper, based in Hermosillo,
Sonora, which borders Arizona.

"Alfredo's disappearance hit us all very hard, and we had to come up with a
strategy that would allow us to keep writing about organized crime, while
also protecting our reporters," Healy said.

The press association wants the killing of journalists to be considered a
federal crime so federal investigators can handle the cases. Now state
officials handle the homicide cases in their area unless they are clearly
linked to drug trafficking.

Reporters said the lack of protection by Mexican officials is the leading
reason reporters are censoring themselves.

"There isn't much (reporters) can do when there is a lack of rule of law
and individual guarantees are practically suspended," said Roberto Rock,
vice president and editor of Mexico City-based El Universal newspaper.

In August, members of the press association agreed to form investigative
teams to look into the stalled cases of slain and missing journalists.

The teams plan to conduct their own investigation into Jimenez's
disappearance and publish their findings in several Mexican newspapers in
February.

"Our most intolerable enemy is silence," said Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz,
director-general of the Mexican daily El Universal. "Even more serious, is
the silence of journalists, because by keeping quiet we let the beast and
its accomplices win."