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Journalism & Communication Monographs2017, Vol. 19(2) 84 –152

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Global and Domestic Networks Advancing Prospects for Institutional and Social Change: The Collective Action Response to Violence Against Journalists

Jeannine E. Relly1 and Celeste González de Bustamante1

AbstractViolence against journalists has emerged as a global human rights issue as the number of those killed in the profession has steadily risen in the new millennium. This research utilized a collective action framework, applying an adapted qualitative network model to examine organizational mobilization, transnational and domestic engagement, normative appeals, information dissemination, lobbying, and prospects for institutional and societal change. Through the Mexico case model application, the study found that instrumental change occurred through adoption of legal and policy institutions. Future research should expand upon social change measurements utilized in this study. We conclude the model can be adapted and utilized in other country cases or in cross-national research.

Keywordscollective action, freedom of expression, human rights, journalism, networks, social change, violence

Antipress violence has emerged as a top threat to journalists’ work around the world (Kim, 2010; Pintak & Ginges, 2008; Waisbord, 2002, 2007; UNESCO, 2015b, 2016b). While journalists covering conventional war have always faced risks, these were from

1The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

Corresponding Author:Jeannine E. Relly, School of Journalism, The University of Arizona, Louise Foucar Marshall Building, 845 N. Park Ave., Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. Email: [email protected]

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Relly and González de Bustamante 85

generally known and expected sources. The threats to journalists have expanded to myriad and sometimes difficult-to-identify actors (Tumber, 2006), including the global growth of oppressive governments, terror networks, militias, organized crime groups, gangs, cartels, and others that dominate regions inside countries or entire nations in crisis (Hughes, Garcés, Márquez-Ramírez, & Arroyave, 2016; Hughes & Márquez-Ramírez, 2017; Hughes et al., 2017; Lisosky & Henrichsen, 2009; Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014; Relly & Zanger, 2016).

Examples of increased risk and attacks span the globe. Twenty-two Brazilian jour-nalists were killed in four years because of their work (Reporters Without Borders, 2016), making Brazil the second most deadly country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2016a). Among those murdered, one journalist was discovered beheaded, another journalist was shot several times inside a radio station, and a third journalist was gunned down outside his home in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro (Reporters Without Borders, 2016). In India, the largest democracy in the world, in 2016, two journalists were murdered within one day of each other: A national news outlet bureau chief was gunned down on his way back to the office, and a broadcast journalist was killed by at least one drive-by shooter on a motorcycle (Raj & Najar, 2016, paras. 1-3). In 2016, a Kiev, Ukraine journalist was killed by a car bomb (Kramer, 2016). And in Syria, more than 100 journalists have been killed in less than five years (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2016c).

These cases provide only a glimpse of the growing number of threats, attacks, and killings of journalists. Globally, violence against journalists has escalated steadily (UNESCO, 2015b). Over the past decade, 827 journalists have been killed (UNESCO, 2016c) while only an estimated 13% of journalist murders have been prosecuted (Singhvi, 2016, para. 1).

Given this global human rights phenomenon of growing violence against journal-ists, often committed with impunity, United Nations (UN) organizations have called for partners to work on the safety and security of journalists (UNESCO, 2012, 2013a, 2015a; UN, 2015). With the emergence of these global initiatives, our study adapts a well-cited framework from the international relations literature to examine the prom-ise and challenges of collective networks that mobilize to stop human rights abuses against journalists around the world (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse & Sikkink, 1999). We note the relevance of this study at a time when the UN has released an operational-ized plan to protect journalists, asserting, “When a problem is global, it calls for a global response” (UNESCO, 2016d, p. 1; UN, 2015).

Our networked institutional and social change framework can be used globally. We demonstrate this by applying the model to the case of Mexico and also citing examples of other countries with similar phenomena. Our work grows out of initial anecdotal observations of transnational and domestic organizations offering support to journalists in Mexico, which has one of the world’s highest rates of impunity for killing journalists, and where the perpetrators walk free in more than eight out of 10 cases (Moncada, 2012; National Commission of Human Rights, 2013, 2016; Witchel, 2015). According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (2016a), the deadliest countries and the number of journalists killed in 2016 were Syria (14), Iraq (6),

86 Journalism & Communication Monographs 19(2)

Yemen (6), Afghanistan (4), Libya (3), and Somalia (3). That same year, two jour-nalists were killed in Mexico, which is ranked as the seventh deadliest country; two were also killed in each of the following nations: India, Pakistan, and Turkey (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2016a).

More than 125 journalists have been killed or disappeared in Mexico since 2000, a year of great political change in the country, when Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN) became president (Procuraduría General de la República, 2016). Fox’s election that year ended more than seven decades of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It also led to a fragmented landscape for orga-nized crime groups that have engaged in regional turf battles ever since.

Mexico is where the world’s most notorious drug trafficker, “El Chapo Guzmán” (Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera) of the Sinaloa cartel, escaped from the country’s highest-security prison. It is a country where crime-beat reporter Anabel Flores Salazar, a mother with two children, was kidnapped, suffocated, and dumped on the side of a highway (Franco, 2016, paras. 1-3). She was discovered half naked, her hands and feet bound, with a plastic bag over her face (Franco, 2016, paras. 1-3). It is a country where the badly beaten and strangled body of investigative reporter Regina Martínez Pérez was discovered in her home (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012, para. 2). It is a country where photojournalist Rubén Espinosa was found dead in a Mexico City apartment with four women; all had been tortured, beaten, and shot in the head (Lakhani, 2015, para. 3).

This qualitative study examines the relationships among a growing network of global and domestic organizations that work to stop violence against journalists and root their work in the human rights norm of freedom of expression. Our research dem-onstrates that the human rights agenda has expanded globally to include journalists’ right to work in an environment without violence (UNESCO, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Development Program, 2013; UNESCO, 2013a, 2013b; UN General Assembly, 2013a, 2013b, UN, 2015). Our model can also be applied to studying interactions of networks of domestic and transnational civil society actors, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the European Union or UN, and governments as they address the oppressive environments and ineffective governance that allow offenders to perpetrate violence against journalists. Our model also provides a host of variables, including legal institutions and policies designed to protect journalists, which can be traced over time and used to examine governmental responses to pressure from domestic and foreign organizations.

Our research finds that organizations, globally and in Mexico, have worked together to address the public policy issue of press safety, and to strengthen and support the press as an institution in environments of violence. These organizations are pressuring governments for institutional and social change to protect journalists against “dark networks” of organized crime and corrupt government officials. Millions of dollars have been funneled into Mexico, on top of its own spending, to address violence against journalists. But to date, no systematic scholarship has investigated how that work is being conducted, what networks have been created, and whether the initiatives are effective.


Our work builds on research focused on international democratic norm diffusion (Leeson & Dean, 2009; Mintrom, 1997; Relly, 2012), Mexico’s democratic transition (Camp, 1999; Hughes, 2003, 2006; Hughes & Lawson, 2005; Lawson, 2002), medi-ated spaces (Reese, 2015), institutional and social change (Dagron & Tufte, 2006; Dutta, 2015; Gamson, 1992; Hallin, 2008; Hughes, 2003, 2006; Reese & Shoemaker, 2016; Waisbord, 2014, 2015; Wilkins, 2014), and research focused on collective action and transnational and domestic advocacy networks that drive human rights agendas around the world (Harlow, 2012; Harlow & Harp, 2012b; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Oliver, 1993; Pinto, 2009; Reese, 2015; Riker, 2002; Risse & Sikkink, 1999; Siegel, 2009; Simmons, 2011; Tarrow, 2005; Waisman, Feinberg, & Zamosc, 2006). Our research contributes to the body of scholarship focused on antipress violence (Ferreira, 2006; Hughes, 2003, 2006; Waisbord, 2002, 2007) and historical oppression of the news media in Mexico (Ferreira, 2006; González de Bustamante, 2013; Hughes, 2003, 2006; Hughes & Lawson, 2005; Lawson, 2002) by exploring these nascent global networks that aim to build stronger environments for news media and to hold govern-ments accountable for instituting improvements. Siegel (2009) suggests such study of information transfer in the network structure “opens up new opportunities for substan-tive theoretical arguments and their empirical testing that have for too long been underexplored” (p. 123). Aday and Livingston (2009) similarly suggest that theorizing about the role of transnational networks in addressing security and foreign policy issues is important to political communication research. Studying social change “poses an important challenge for communication scholarship” given the “paucity of evi-dence-based, theoretical arguments about the links between communication and social policies” (Waisbord, 2015, p. 150).

In the final stage of our model, the global advocacy network would wind down and domestic press rights and freedom of expression organizations would become central to maintaining an environment that supports global human rights norms. The frame-work also offers researchers a path for alternative explanations to governmental responses to outside pressures, such as adopting laws and policies yet making few changes beyond those referred to as “window-dressing.” Agreeing with scholar Silvio Waisbord (2015) that “policy advocacy is essentially an exercise of communication” (p. 150), we adopt a constructivist approach to examining the relationships and initia-tives among intergovernmental, transnational, and domestic actors, and other coun-tries (primarily the United States) toward Mexico’s legal system and policies in the presence of violence.

The study furthers scholarship focused on domestic and transnational actors and states that have put “norm-violating states on the international agenda” in their attempt to empower domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that mobilize against repression by corrupt government agents and criminal organizations (Risse & Sikkink, 1999, p. 5). These antiviolence, human rights–oriented networks challenge norm-vio-lating institutions by creating transnational structures that pressure governments simultaneously “from above and below” to advance institutional and social change (Brysk, 1993, pp. 259-260; Carpenter, 2007; Haas, 1992; Hughes, 2003, 2006; Livingston & Asmolov, 2010; Powell & DiMaggio, 2012; Powers, 2016; Reese, 2015;


Risse & Sikkink, 1999, p. 5; Siegel, 2009; Tarrow, 2005). Furthermore, this research enables scholars of collective action to better understand the role of transnational and domestic networks when analyzing social change outcomes. Studying network struc-tures, as Siegel (2009) suggested, will expand an underdeveloped area of theory and empirical testing.

Ultimately, we examine the extent to which domestic NGOs, international/transna-tional NGOs (INGOs), IGOs such as the UN, and other governments have supported or constrained institutional reform and societal change related to violence against jour-nalists in a global setting, and then, in Mexico. The following sections outline the bedrock of the issue: antipress violence, impunity, and “dark networks”; the global network framework for this study; the historical context for human rights and antipress violence in Mexico; and the methodology we used here.

A Global Issue: Antipress Violence, Impunity, and “Dark Networks”

The level of violence against the news media can change over time, and rise or fall from region to region, even within one country (Kim, 2010; Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014; Waisbord, 2002, 2007). In such environments, Waisbord (2002) describes how journalists face “localized, unstructured, scattered violence that lacks the logic of conventional civil wars” (p. 100). Waisbord (2007) also indicates that “state absence facilitates anti-press violence” (p. 115). Others have found that the rate of impunity for killing journalists is correlated with impunity over time, though some cases legitimately lack evidence (Heyns & Srinivasan, 2013). Generally, these con-texts are marked by “a lack of political will to prosecute” and perpetrators receive a form of de facto state-sanctioned political cover (p. 312).

This study utilizes a well-accepted definition of impunity: “total lack of investiga-tion, prosecution, capture, trial and conviction of those responsible for violations of the rights protected” (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2002, p. 13). In global work focused on breaking the impunity cycle, as the Committee to Protect Journalists (2014) noted, the majority of murdered journalists were “reporting on corruption, crime, human rights, politics and war, among other issues of vital importance to their societies”; globally, in “90 percent of all these cases there has been total impunity—no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions” (p. 2). According to the human rights litera-ture, those suspected of committing crimes against journalists often are “from the very institutions and authorities responsible for upholding and enforcing a protective regime” (Heyns & Srinivasan, 2013, p. 311).

Our model includes “dark networks,” a concept utilized to describe illegal or covert networks of organized crime (Milward & Raab, 2006; Raab & Milward, 2003). Here, in the absence of interacting directly with representatives of “dark networks,” we uti-lize data representing violence against journalists as a proxy for “dark networks.” Raab and Milward (2003) developed the dark networks “metaphor—and its associated analytical framework out of a need to understand the increasingly decentralized nature of groups engaged in illicit and covert activities” (Asal, Milward, & Schoon, 2015, p.


114). Previous dark-networks research has focused upon the Al Qaeda terror network, drug-trafficking networks, and weapons- and diamond-smuggling networks (Asal et al., 2015; Milward & Raab, 2006; Raab & Milward, 2003, p. 413).

A burgeoning literature also addresses how international advocates (nongovern-mental, intergovernmental, and governmental) “monitor, scrutinize, and take action in response to human rights violations in different countries” and whether or not govern-ments respond to such pressure (Muñoz, 2014, p. 181). This type of research has become increasingly relevant in journalism and communication studies as recent work by UN organizations and others aims to hold the state accountable, ultimately, for the safety and protection of journalists in support of international norms and “obligations to uphold human rights” (UNESCO, 2013a, 2013b, p. 9).

The issue of human rights, including protection of journalists, has become one of the foci of the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral agreement between Mexico and the United States. Its key focus, however, is combating organized crime. Since 2008, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than US$2.5 billion for Mexico, with 15% of the assis-tance contingent on Mexico meeting human rights conditions (Trans-Border Institute, 2013, p. 2; U.S. Department of State, 2017). As the violence rose during the war on organized crime, a broader security program under the Initiative included the United States helping to fund security- and safety-related programs for Mexican journalists and human rights defenders.1 And as the number of murdered and disappeared journal-ists grew over the years in Mexico, more than a dozen regional, transnational, and supranational organizations initiated or ramped up their interventions.

The following section outlines our adapted model, which serves as a framework to examine the global and domestic organizational network responses to the issue of antipress violence. The model also has potential for studying influences on govern-ment, and ways that institutional and social change may be investigated.

Framework

Nearly two decades ago Keck and Sikkink (1998) suggested that domestic nongovern-mental human rights organizations provide a critical link in global networks; more-over, when these networks were absent, international human rights work was “severely hampered” (p. 117). Several scholars have demonstrated that civil society organiza-tions’ global initiatives can set agendas on human rights issues through collective action. Examples include the campaign to ban landmines, the Free Tibet movement, and the antiapartheid movement in South Africa (Thrall, Stecula, & Sweet, 2014, p. 136). A case study of the Mexican northern border city Ciudad Juárez examined activ-ism against femicide in an environment of violence (Staudt, 2008). Thus, human rights advocacy networks are not new. Between the late 1960s and late 1990s, the “number, size, and professionalism and the speed, density, and complexity of international link-ages among them has grown dramatically” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 10).

Here, we apply a collective action framework in its broadest sense as “actors are brought together in a variety of ways to coordinate their actions” (Gamson, 1992; Oliver, 1993, p. 293). Figure 1 presents the potential relationships among global and


domestic organizations in our model, which is a modified version of Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) human rights–oriented framework. Our model conceptualizes domestic and global networks pressing for a safe and secure environment for journal-ists. We also draw on the conceptualization of “dark networks” (Asal et al., 2015; Raab & Milward, 2003) and Reese’s (2015, p. 2263) “globalization of mediated spaces” work, which focused on transnational environmentalism within China. In our model, the global environment includes IGOs (such as UNESCO, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), INGOs (such as Article 19, Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders), and other states (other governments, largely the United States in this study). In the dimension of the nation-state, we include the government (of Mexico, in this case), domestic NGOs, and add the concept of dark networks, which are positioned, in part, within the state, because corrupt government officials also play a role in dark networks. The relationships among actors are indicated by the arrows (the strongest links are solid lines), with the model focusing largely on interac-tions of organizational networks working specifically on violence against journalists.

To operationalize these illustrated relationships, we again borrow from the interna-tional relations literature. We adapt a multistage model to examine interactions between society, the state, and international/transnational organizational networks that advocate for international human rights norms (Risse & Sikkink, 1999) related to free-dom of expression and the right to practice journalism in an environment of safety and security. Figure 2 shows that our model begins with weak domestic civil society pres-sure (Society) and an ineffective government (State) in the presence of the violence of

Figure 1. Organizational interactions.Source. Keck and Sikkink (1998, p. 13); Risse and Sikkink (1999, p. 19); Asal, Milward, and Schoon (2015); Reese (2015). Used with permission of Cornell University Press.Note. NGO = nongovernmental organization.


Dark Networks, which, as the diagram demonstrates, are ever present. At the same time, IGOs, other states, and transnational organizations form networks with domestic NGOs (Society) to pressure a government to promote institutional change. In the case of Mexico, these networks pressed for adopting laws and policies designed to enable the government to address dark networks’ violence toward journalists. It would be in this environment that the government of Mexico could transform its environment of impunity, by using such laws to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of crimes against news media members. In the process, according to our model’s conceptual framework, domestic NGOs are emboldened to advocate for journalists’ rights and to monitor governmental activity related to security and safety.

In the final “ideal-type” phase of the model, the government adheres to the policies developed to protect journalists from violence; domestic advocacy NGOs are embold-ened to monitor, confront, and urge the government for maintenance of social change; and global networks wind down their activity (Risse & Sikkink, 1999, p. 20). Alternatively, the model provides for the possibility that the situation could regress back to insecure and unsafe conditions for journalists in an environment of impunity.2

The literature demonstrates that these advocacy networks can build new channels among civil society actors, international organizations, and states that provide domes-tic-level actors international system access, drawing attention to their plight, global attention they may not have had prior to networks forming; furthermore, Keck and Sikkink (1998) note that in the area of human rights, international resources become “available to new actors in domestic political and social struggles” (p. 1). Risse and Sikkink (1999) argued that these types of advocacy networks put norm-violating coun-tries on the global agenda, empower domestic groups seeking legitimacy for their claims about repression, and challenge governments that do not enforce human rights

Figure 2. Operationalized network model of influences on institutional and social change.Source. Risse and Sikkink (1999, p. 20); Asal, Milward, and Schoon (2015); Reese (2015).


norms in-country. Organizational networks lobby international and intergovernmental groups and governments “to express concern, investigate, and bring pressure for change” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. viii).

In a typology of network “tactics,” Keck and Sikkink (1998) note that networked groups “use the power of their information, ideas, and strategies . . . not just reasoning with opponents, but also bringing pressure, arm-twisting, encouraging sanctions, and shaming” (p. 16). Any campaign, they note, may contain one or more of the following: “information politics,” which includes producing credible information quickly and visibly for the greatest impact; “symbolic politics,” utilizing “symbols, actions, or stories that make sense of a situation” for a distant audience; “leverage politics,” which may include calling on “powerful actors to affect a situation where weaker members of a network are unlikely to have influence”; and “accountability politics,” which entails holding those in power to commitments (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 16).

Norm influence on states has been understood as involving three stages: “norm emergence,” “norm acceptance,” and “internalization” (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, pp. 895-899). We suggest the latter would be demonstrated when a government adopts policies and laws that aim to protect journalists from violence, and when it actively pursues perpetrators of crimes against journalists.

The Mexico Case: Violence, Freedom of Expression, and State and Nonstate Actors

Mexico’s PRI governed the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000, and during its seven-decade rule, the party was “not particularly enthusiastic about the promotion of human rights, either within Mexico or abroad” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 36). However, Keck and Sikkink (1998) suggested that by the 1980s, Mexico was cultivating “its image as a defender of human rights” at the global level yet failed “to address its own human rights violations” (p. 111). By the 1990s, the country was “increasingly involved with regional and international human rights bodies” and ratified all of the major human rights treaties at these levels (Simmons & Mueller, 2014, p. 5). Furthermore, Mexico has long utilized “rights-oriented rhetoric and social justice language embedded in its post-revolutionary Constitution of 1917” (Staudt, 2014, p. 167), which guarantees freedom of expression. Scholars have argued that in practice, press rights are weak (Aguiar, 2002; Ferreira, 2006). Nonetheless, historically, the Mexican news media have not been considered overtly oppressed in typical ways through state-ownership dictates or direct censorship. Instead, they were indirectly steered through government subsidies and a broadcast contract duopoly (Televisa and TV Azteca; González de Bustamante, 2013; Hughes, 2006; Lawson, 2002). Furthermore, to this day, news out-lets were subject to governmental preferences for advertising, often provided to news media that reported according to the party line (González de Bustamante, 2013; González de Bustamante & Relly, 2014, 2016; Hughes, 2006; Lawson, 2002; Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014). These conditions and practices resulted in few jour-nalists questioning the status quo (Hughes, 2003).


Scholars have noted that during some periods of the PRI leadership rule, particu-larly the late 1960s into the 1970s, “systematic and grave violations of human rights” occurred in Mexico (Muñoz, 2009, p. 36). Scholars often cite as evidence the October 1968 case when military troops fired on protesters demonstrating peacefully in Mexico City, killing as many as 500 students and wounding more than 2,000 (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 110). This single example, among many human rights issues over time, served as a critical juncture for a nascent political and social movement, the latter of which included development of civil society. In 1971, a government massacre of student protestors prompted an increasingly active civil society and the organization of human rights–based groups among citizens irate about the atrocities (Hughes, 2006; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Only in the late 1980s, however, did domestic groups begin to collabo-rate with an international network to publicize human rights abuses in Mexico (Fox, 1994; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Muñoz, 2014). In 1984, just four nongovernmental human rights organizations existed in Mexico (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). That year, a group of activists, intellectuals, and politicians developed the Mexican Academy for Human Rights, which, with early funding assistance from the Ford Foundation, directed attention to training practitioners and focused on research and education largely among domestic groups (Keck & Sikkink, 1998).

By the 1990s, the power of the ruling PRI party began to factionalize and other par-ties won elections at the state level. As the PRI continued to lose its control in that decade, more independent and investigative journalistic work was being conducted. Relatedly, violence against journalists increased (Hughes, 2003, 2006; Olsen, 2014). Furthermore, in the last decade of the 20th century, the number of human rights orga-nizations in Mexico rose to more than 200 (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), with some focused on freedom-of-expression issues. The number of journalists killed and disappeared in the new millennium spiked to an all-time high as organized crime groups jockeyed over territory for human trafficking and for moving illicit goods throughout the coun-try. Although the previous “arrangements” between the PRI government and orga-nized crime ended with the Fox administration (Schedler, 2014), it was the government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, which declared a war on organized crime and partnered with the United States in the Mérida Initiative. The Calderón administration also resisted critical news coverage (Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014).

Violence against journalists is not new in Mexico. Between 1971 and 1984, for example, 24 journalists were killed (Trejo Delarbre, 1992). Many of those journalists were investigating public interest issues such as organized crime and public corruption (Fundación MEPI, 2010; Trejo Delarbre, 1992). Among the high-profile journalist assassinations was the 1984 killing of columnist and journalist Manuel Buendía Tellezgirón, whose reporting on government corruption and organized crime was widely circulated. However, the most recent spike in violence against Mexican jour-nalists occurred during the decade and a half after the nation shed the yoke of one-party rule, advanced judicial reforms, launched an autonomous human rights commission (Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH), and designated state human rights commissions to investigate prior human rights abuses and mass killings (Simmons & Mueller, 2014).


In light of the global context for violence against journalists and the ongoing situa-tion in Mexico, our research focuses on how organizational networks are addressing the problem and whether the government is responding. The study investigates five research questions:

Research Question 1: To what extent has the issue of violence against journalists in Mexico been propelled onto the global agenda?Research Question 2: What are the relationships, connections, campaigns, and challenges, if any, among domestic, transnational, governmental, and intergovern-mental actors involved in tackling violence against journalists as a human rights issue, in general, and in Mexico?Research Question 3: What policy outcomes, if any, are organizations and net-works of organizations actively advocating with respect to supporting and strength-ening security for the press in a global context, and in Mexico?Research Question 4: What legal and policy indicators may demonstrate whether the Mexican government has institutionalized human rights norms?Research Question 5: Has the government of Mexico demonstrated that human rights norms to protect journalists, as set out in legal frameworks, have been implemented?

Method

We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews, with approval from the University of Arizona Institutional Review Board. We also used data from organizational reports, news reports, datasets, and secondary sources as a means of triangulating; these data provide context and counterfactuals to the framework and fieldwork. The unit of anal-ysis for this qualitative network study is the organizational level. We focused on four types of major organizational groups: IGOs, nonstate actors (domestic NGOs, inside and outside of Mexico, and international/transnational NGOs [INGOs]), state govern-mental actors/organizations (GOs) in Mexico, and other nations (GOs), primarily the United States because of its proximity, funding, and human resource strategies that focus on violence against journalists in Mexico.

Based on the literature, we developed a 35-item questionnaire that examines orga-nizational motivation for mobilization; organizational engagement among groups (domestic, transnational, intergovernmental, and governments); normative appeals, including invoking international human rights norms; support provided to news media in crisis; information dissemination (through reports, social media, or other means in-country or internationally); transnational network formation; influences of group het-erogeneity; group action coordination issues; pressure from bilateral and multilateral networks on state actors, with an analytical emphasis on potential critical junctures, institutional reform of the government, and social change (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse & Sikkink, 1999). We also posed questions for historical context.

Given the security situation in Mexico and the large number of domestic NGOs focused on human rights, we developed a purposive sample of representatives from


domestic and transnational NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, and governmen-tal organizations that focused on freedom of expression issues. We began by drawing from a list of more than 70 participants in the 2012 forum titled, “Safety and Protection for Journalists, Bloggers, and Citizen Journalists,” held at the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. The program aimed to help participants develop strategies to protect journalists and others in Mexico and other Latin American countries; many of the participants were representatives of domestic and transnational NGOs and IGOs. Using a purposive sample coupled with a snowball approach, we identified other potential study participants through recom-mendations of study participants and by drawing from a roster of journalists involved with organizations from one of our earlier studies. All of the governmental organiza-tions/representatives on our list involved public agencies focused on violence against journalists and more broadly, freedom of expression. The study’s focus on government organizations was predominantly those from Mexico and the United States, primarily because the two nations were tied by the U.S.–Mexico Mérida Initiative, the partner-ship to fight organized crime. That said, when organizational representatives who were interviewed mentioned other governments involved with the issue in Mexico, we attempted to include those perspectives through primary documents.

We conducted semistructured interviews with 33 participants from June 22, 2013, through July 9, 2014. The interviews for the study were during the early portion of Enrique Peña Nieto’s 6-year presidency (2012-2018), a critical juncture for the coun-try that allowed us to frame questions about a portion of the Peña Nieto term, as well as the previous presidential terms of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) and Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006). Calderón, like Fox, was from the PAN party. As noted, the Calderón administration entered an agreement with the United States in 2007 to fight transnational and domestic organized crime; this precipitated a sharp increase in violence. The Peña Nieto administration was a resumption of the longest dominating PRI party.

The majority of interviews were face-to-face; when we could not meet in person, interviews were conducted by Skype or phone. All but one of the interviews were audio recorded with the participants’ permission; all participants granted written per-mission to use their names in reporting our findings, with one exception. The inter-views, which lasted on average about an hour, were conducted in English and Spanish. The English-language audio was transcribed; Spanish interviews were translated and transcribed.

Our findings from semistructured, in-depth interviews with a sample of 33 repre-sentatives from four types of organizations were supplemented with documents gener-ated by these organizations. Over half of our interviews were with representatives of domestic NGOs (51.52%), largely from Mexico. The remainder represented INGOs (27.27%), GOs (12.12%), and IGOs (9.09%). The list of organizations and representa-tives is provided in the appendix.3

We analyzed our data with an inductive approach appropriate to qualitative analysis (Altheide, 1987, 1996; Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Creswell, 2009) with guidance from network analysis (Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2013) and a focus on critical junctures.


Critical junctures are “crucial founding moments of institutional formation that send countries along broadly different developmental paths”; the literature suggests that these have led to patterns, interactions, and outcomes in ongoing political or other pro-cesses (Thelen, 1999, pp. 387-388). Often, it is not one event, but a confluence of events or reactions to conditions that reach a critical mass and lead to the activation of global networks. We first examined interview transcripts and organizational documents to interpret data for conceptual areas that were established through the core research questions; the analytical framework sought associations and discrepancies in the data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). We thus coded data for constructs that supported or ran coun-ter to our model’s framework to allow the emergence of counterfactuals and additional categories or subcategories.

We examined the environment of repression and network activation (critical junctures). Following Risse and Sikkink (1999), we analyzed organizational cam-paigns, “lobbying,” and reactions of the state, looking for examples of governmen-tal organization “denial” of the violence or apathy toward rule of law, as well as “tactical concessions” and the often cosmetic concessions that may result from international pressure and criticism (pp. 23-27). We examined whether the Mexican government attempted to correct issues related to violence against journalists in what Risse and Sikkink describe as the “prescriptive status” phase, referring to international democratic norms that are becoming institutionalized (p. 29). We also utilized proxy variables for institutionalized norms being practiced and for signs that, according to Risse and Sikkink, both transnational and intergovernmental organizations are winding down support and domestic organizations are assuming larger roles.

Findings

Our findings are organized by research questions. We first examine the critical junc-tures that put the dark networks’ threat to journalists in Mexico on the domestic and global governance agenda, then ask to what extent international/transnational and domestic NGOs, IGOs, and governmental organizations have provided support or impeded journalists practicing in Mexico amid an environment of mercurial violence. We also examine relationships, connections, and campaigns among these groups. We outline potential policy outcomes that appear to be in response to external pressure from a collective effort of transnational and domestic organizations, IGOs, and the U.S. government, and which may have led to strengthening the potential for institu-tional and social change. We also look specifically at critical institutional structural changes that the Mexican government has adopted, potentially in response to pressure from organizations inside and outside of the country, which could be part of a new and growing global trend. Finally, in the last stage of our institutional and social change model, we utilize global- and national-level indicators suggested by UNESCO (2013a, 2013b) to analyze the extent to which the Mexican government has institutionalized human rights norms in practice through policies and legal frameworks designed to protect journalists.


Critical Junctures Propelling News Media Violence Onto the Global Agenda

At the global level, the number of journalists killed has climbed steadily in the last 10 years, as Figure 3 demonstrates. Put another way, on average, more than 82 journalists have been killed each year for the last decade (UNESCO, 2016c). We initially examine the extent to which violence against journalists has been recognized internationally.

The data indicate that violence against journalists has arrived on the global agenda at the intergovernmental level of the UN, its organizations, and other groups. As Figure 4 demonstrates, in the years leading up to the spike in violence after the turn of the millennium, only a handful of initiatives addressed violence against journalists as a human rights issue; the period between 2000 and 2015 saw a sixfold increase in resolutions, declarations, decisions, and implementation plans advanced by organiza-tions such as the UN General Assembly, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNESCO, the UN Office of the Organization of American States, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UN Security Council, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, among others. Many of the actions are nonbinding in nature, however (Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, 2011; Heyns & Srinivasan, 2013).

In response to the growing number of attacks on journalists around the world, the UN initiated a process for developing a “comprehensive, coherent, and action-oriented approach to the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity” (UNESCO, 2012, p. 7). In 2011, UN interagency representatives worked on a draft plan, with input from inter-national/transnational and domestic NGO attendees at the meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. In 2012, the UN’s interagency meeting in Vienna, Austria, focused on journalist safety and the issue of impunity; the meeting involved UNESCO, the UN Development Program, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UNODC.

Figure 3. Global pattern of killings of journalists since 2000.Source. Committee to Protect Journalists (2016a).


At the intergovernmental level in reference to Mexico, there was high-profile-level involvement by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights after the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded the organization US$1.6 million to “increase the capacity of the Government of Mexico and civil society to understand and address human rights (with focus on freedom of expression) challenges by providing information and analysis on the human rights situation in areas of high violence in the country” [33].4 The UN Special Rapporteur explained why

Figure 4. Timeline of intergovernmental organization interventions.


he and a colleague, then the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, conducted an official visit before reporting to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly: “We felt that it was important that two rapporteurs on freedom of expression . . . go together to the country to verify how grave the situation was” [1]. In 2011, the Special Rapporteurs issued a joint press statement that was published by global news outlets, indicating their concern with “the lack of progress in the effective implementation of the Coordination Agreement for the Implementation of Preventative and Protective Actions for Journalists”; the statement acknowledged the Mexican government’s failure to punish those responsible for violence against journalists, although for six years a governmental office had focused on the issue (Organization of American States, 2011, para. 5). Another critical juncture occurred in 2011 when Mexico received the distinction of having a “not free” press by Freedom House (2011) in its annual rating and when the UNODC initiated a project related to journalists. A UNODC representative in Mexico City described “a peculiar situation” that journalists, initially, were unaware of: Criminal groups attempted to use unsuspecting news media, “particularly local media at the very beginning,” as a platform for their messaging to rival organizations [3]. For example, representatives of an organized crime group would place a banner with a message to their criminal opponents in the same territory at a gory crime scene, such as a bridge with dead bodies hanging from it, which journalists were compelled to report upon. That UNODC representative also said criminal groups had infiltrated the news media with the objective of broadcasting a message of “terror, intimidation”:

This is something unusual also for criminal groups, which certainly intrigued us both in terms of development of criminal minds and criminal cultures, but also as part of the UN as a direct threat to human rights and to freedom of the press. [3]

Also in 2011, USAID funded a four-year grant of US$5 million to Freedom House Mexico’s office aimed at protecting journalists and human rights defenders5 from vio-lence [33]. Freedom House, which works in countries around the world, received a second grant from the U.S. government for Mexico that extended to 2018. Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi, a founding member of the Mexican Human Rights Commission in the 1980s, was recruited to direct the Freedom House Mexico office. She had decades of experience working on human rights in the country and had worked with a number of administrations (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Acosta said that she was told consistently by people that her office “would never be able to do anything to help journalists if we did not help to build networks and go across sectors” [11]:

Any effort to address the problems faced by journalists would have to encompass the efforts of human rights organizations, other civil society organizations, intellectuals, academics, obviously not only the journalists, but the media, the directors of the media and government officials. [11]

Within a year, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin gathered together leading supranational, transnational, and domestic


organizational representatives to address the unprecedented violence against journal-ists in Mexico and the region. According to the Knight Center’s founding director, the most important thing was the exchange of experience between different countries:

We had a previous [forum] on coverage of drug trafficking that was also very much focused on Mexico because Mexico was the leading . . . hotspot in the region . . . Those conferences, I think, were very helpful. [4]

As the body count of journalists rose in Mexico, the work of domestic organizations grew. The Mexican nonprofit National Center of Social Communication (CENCOS) began a database documenting the attacks [20]. The Mexican organization, Diario 19, was formed to help displaced and relocated journalists after its journalist founder was kidnapped and tortured (beaten and burned with cigarettes all over his body, then placed under police protection only to be abandoned by law enforcement after two days) [22]. The Journalist Association of Ciudad Juárez lobbied for life insurance when companies turned them down because of their high occupational risk of being killed [28]. Several organizations formed or expanded after colleagues were killed, freedom of movement was constrained, or investigations into the assassinations of journalists ended with authorities’ dismissing or ignoring the problem. The Juárez Journalist Network was formed in 2011 during an informal meeting of journalists. Its cofounder explained, “The very same violence that we live in Mexico has awakened that sense of solidarity . . . Those violent situations made us understand that if we are not together we are not going to be able to accomplish anything” [27].

Network Connections, Campaigns, and Challenges

Our second area of inquiry examines the relationships among domestic, transnational, governmental, and intergovernmental actors involved in tackling violence against journalists as a human rights issue. We studied connections, campaigns, and informal network challenges. By 2012, at the intergovernmental level, the UN’s interagency meeting in Vienna, Austria,6 had drafted “Operationalizing the UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity” (UNESCO, 2012). This guide for UNESCO field officers describes the action plan as “a new UN-wide initiative to pro-vide an overarching framework for the UN system to work together with all the stake-holders including the national authorities and the various national and international organizations” (UNESCO, 2012, p. 1).

In meetings co-organized by IGOs7 over multiple years, the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity was written in consultation with 15 intergovernmental agencies, 37 member states of UNESCO, and 40 NGOs, IGOs, professional associations, media groups, and independent experts (UN, 2015, p. 4). At a 2012 meeting among UN agencies, Iraq, Nepal, Pakistan, and South Sudan were selected for the initial implementation of the UN safety plan for journalists, with actions mobilized next in Guatemala, Honduras, Jordan, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Tunisia (UN, 2015, pp. 13, 21-22).


In Mexico, the UNODC was invited to join the global effort to focus on threats to journalists by criminal organizations.

Compared to other institutions, certainly, we have the unique knowledge of criminal organizations, their markets, how they use violence, as well as, we have the specific know-how in understanding which are most probably the most cost-effective, short, medium, and long-term solutions. [3]

The UN global safety plan emphasizes tailored approaches for nations, “strength-ening the legal mechanisms available nationally, regionally and globally, that support the right to freedom of expression and information” (UNESCO, 2016d, p. 1). The plan for journalist safety, as drafted, urged UN affiliates and partners to work with three different constituencies of stakeholders: other UN agencies, authorities at the national level, news media, and international and local NGOs active in freedom of expression issues (UNESCO, 2012). The draft plan includes “talking points with stakeholders,” including rights-based appeal, “appeal relating to governance,” “appeal to justice and the rule of law,” “appeal based on the knowledge society . . . to create a free and safe environment that is conducive to development and progress,” “appeal to national interests,” and appeal to “organizational interests” being served (pp. 4-6).

In Mexico, and we surmise in other countries, many of the sweeping initiatives for structural changes were advanced by transnational–domestic coalitions and campaigns that included organizations from around the world that had representa-tives in Mexico and funding from outside of Mexico. Given the security issues in Mexico and organizational secrecy, in some cases, about initiatives and activities related to the safety of journalists, we were not able to reach every organization involved with the network supporting journalist security and safety in Mexico. That said, we established a pattern of the relationships among some agencies of the U.S. government, IGOs, transnational and regional organizations, and domestic groups. Figure 5 illustrates each organization’s network relationship by type. Each major category—IGO, INGO, domestic NGO (NGO), and governmental organization (GO)—is represented as a point of contact for all of the organizational group types in the study. We split the government organization category into the Mexican gov-ernment (MexGo) and U.S. government (USGov), given that the model focuses on outside pressure on the state (GO) that is in the process of institutional and social change.

Figure 5 demonstrates that the Mexican and U.S. governments interacted most often with intergovernmental and transnational organizations, the latter of which had the most interaction with local NGOs. We found that some organizations working on the Mexico case had singular missions, such as security training for Mexican journal-ists; others were more expansive and included monitoring and investigating criminal acts perpetrated against journalists and tracking governmental follow-up. Additional agendas included digital security and professional ethics trainings; developing net-works; raising the visibility of cases of attacks and murders through alerts, reports,


multimedia, and social media; offering legal counsel; providing protection and reloca-tion options; lobbying lawmakers; assisting with writing legislation and policies; and political and administrative training activity to foster protection and institutional reform and social change.

In initiatives that focused on the violence issue for journalists, organizations formed informal collectives and shared strategies. Singularly and in groups, organizations issued statements; launched and sustained social media and news media advertisement campaigns; held academic forums, radio and TV programs, dialogues with govern-ments, and meetings with journalists; and raised funds and allocated funds to relocate journalists and their families. The director of Article 198 in Mexico noted, “Depending on who the audience is, we have different strategies” [8].

Strategic Planning

Scholars suggest that organizational networks can influence politics (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse & Sikkink, 1999). We argue that these networks can influence bureaucra-cies and citizen perspectives, as well. As Keck and Sikkink (1998) note, networks simultaneously help “to define an issue area,” by setting the agenda and framing debates, “encouraging discursive commitments from states and other policy actors,” pressing for changes in procedures, and influencing policy and practice changes of “target actors” (p. 201). Similar to the UN’s suggested safety plan, in Mexico, a few regional and transnational NGOs, including Article 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, the Inter American Press Association, and Reporters Without Borders, performed multiple roles to address the violence against journalists.

Figure 5. Organizational type and network affiliation matrix with Mexico case.Note. USGov = U.S. government; MexGo = Mexican government; NGO = nongovernmental organization; IGO = intergovernmental organization; INGO = international/transnational nongovernmental organization.


Figure 6. Overview of Freedom House Mexico Project (2011-2015).Source. Freedom House Mexico (2013).

The organization that appeared to take the national lead was the Mexico office of Freedom House; UNESCO guidelines similarly suggest that a transnational organiza-tion provides centralized support. The deputy director of Freedom House Mexico described the organization as a “convening organization that brings other organiza-tions and other parts of civil society together to do collective work” [12]. With its first four-year USAID grant, in 2011, Freedom House Mexico began interviewing nearly 60 key actors to assess security issues for journalists and to identify major threats related to freedom of expression in Mexico [11]. The organization also contracted with a consultant for strategic planning and connected with journalists, civil society organi-zations, and offices throughout the Mexican government (including the Ministry of Interior and the federal prosecutor), plus the U.S. embassies, the European Union, and UN organizations, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [11, 12].

According to the USAID [33], Freedom House was working with both government and civil society to strengthen both protection and prevention efforts, “putting into place long-term mechanisms that ensure journalists can perform their functions with-out risking their lives.” Freedom House Mexico worked with civil society organiza-tions, journalists, and government agencies throughout Mexico in areas of digital protection, professional training, legal frameworks, emergency support, advocacy, analyses, monitoring, follow-up, training, technical assistance, events, and publica-tions. As Figure 6 outlines, Freedom House’s plan in Mexico from 2011 to 2015 included major civil society and governmental activity focused on ameliorating


violence against journalists and human rights defenders. According to Freedom House Mexico’s Project Director, “We worked very, very hard during the first year of the implementation of the programs to really come up with a very detailed strategy” [11].

Figure 7 illustrates one year of Freedom House Mexico partnerships with civil soci-ety organizations that focus on freedom of expression in an environment of violence. The deputy director of Freedom House Mexico noted, “What we’re trying to do is work with and through various organizations who are working on freedom of expression from various angles . . . So it has . . . spread things out and also [includes] diversity of opinions and strategies for how to address freedom of expression in Mexico” [12].

A few other groups have similarly utilized multilevel strategies in Mexico. For example, the regional Inter American Press Association, which has worked there for decades and interacts with the Mexican government, also conducts investigations, legal analyses, and trains journalists [5]. The Senior Americas Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that his international organization’s broad support of Mexican journalists has included one-on-one meetings with local journalists, as well as meetings with politicians, three Mexican presidents, other NGOs, UN organizations, and other IGOs. He explained how the Committee to Protect Journalists publicized the plight of Mexican journalists: They worked on special

Figure 7. Network activity for one year of projects to protect journalists and human rights defenders from violence in U.S. Agency for International Development program implemented by Freedom House Mexico.Source. Freedom House Mexico (2013).


reports that highlighted attacks on Mexican journalists, producing recommendations that went to the Mexican government, the international community, the Organization of American States, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the UN, the U.S. government, and the UN Human Rights Council [6].

Network Strategies and Dynamics

Domestic organization representatives participating in our study noted they sought assistance from global groups to avoid work duplication and share expertise. Furthermore, transnational organizations representing journalists were able to catapult a case in a small town to national and international coverage. Mexican journalist and photographer Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz is a case in point. Jiménez covered security and crime for Notisur and El Liberal del Sur newspapers before he disappeared in the town of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz in early 2014; his body later was found buried in another municipality (BBC News, 2014; Committee to Protect Journalists, 2014). A mission of international press rights organization representatives visited the state to investigate the killing and issued a global report (Cruz, 2014). Transnational press rights organizations also individually reported on the killing (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2014; PEN International, 2014; Reporters Without Borders, 2014). IGOs, such as UNESCO, condemned the killing (UNESCO, 2014). Global news organiza-tions, such as the BBC News (2014) and The Associated Press (Soberanes Santin, 2014), also reported on the killing and smaller outlets published these news reports. Even the Huffington Post (Lerner, 2014) and Vice News (Mastrogiovanni, 2014) weighed in. A cofounder of Mexicans in Exile stated transnational organizations such as Article 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch made the violence against journalists’ issue a national and global cause because “working-class journalists, which I think would be most of the journalists, don’t have the resources, the knowledge or connections or the ability to reach out like that” [24].

The partnerships among transnational and domestic NGOs can be the most publicly visible aspects of the networks focused on Mexico, although the relationships often are informal. A senior director for special projects for the International Center for Journalists noted, “Most of the work that we do is in partnership, especially with the local organizations” [9]. The importance of these partnerships within the network in making issues visible on the international agenda was noted by the former director of the Mexican Association of the Right to Information:

Another benefit is that you have the possibility to both share your experience as an association and also to receive “know how” from other actors, from other regions of the world . . . It is a fact the role of these international networks is fundamental for the visibility and for the survival of the organizations. [16]

The director of the National Center for Social Communication noted that networking with transnational and domestic groups includes sharing information:


In some cases, we do not have all of the information and so what we do is to compare information . . . “Hey, what do you have? Are you on it? I’ll take this case.” . . . Sometimes we have to see case-by-case to know how we are going to react to attend to a journalist and/or his family. Others are like more general strategies . . . We also worked to push the constitutional reform forward. That was also group work. [20]

“Normative Appeals”

Scholars point out that no international treaties are specifically dedicated to protect-ing journalists from physical attacks. Nonetheless, freedom of expression has been an established norm for more than 65 years and is a human right outlined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Heyns & Srinivasan, 2013). Multilateral networks have exerted pressure on governments using normative appeals based on these international stan-dards. Furthermore, norm-violating countries have been placed on the global agenda, with scholars theorizing about why some issues emerge while others do not (Carpenter, 2007).

We note a steady and continuous stream of news headlines about violence against journalists in Mexico, admonishing (or shaming) the Mexican government for its inef-fectiveness. For example, the Inter American Press Association’s 300 newspaper membership in Latin America published major announcements every month about cases of journalists who had been assassinated [5]. Over the years, organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Article 19 issued scathing reports. These detailed the crimes against journalists and news organizations, and called on the Mexican government to respond.

For example, in 2012, the London-based NGO, Article 19, which focuses on free-dom of expression and information access, issued a report titled, “Forced Silence: The State, an Accomplice in Violence Against Journalists in Mexico”; this found that state authorities and security forces had lodged 40% of the attacks on journalists and jour-nalists reported the attacks by organized crime in 13% of the cases (International Freedom of Expression Exchange, 2012). Reporters Without Borders (2015) published the piece, “Mexican president urged to rein in violence against journalists.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (2011) ranked Mexico among “the world’s most murderous countries for the press . . . where authorities appear powerless in bringing killers to justice” (p. 1). Just how powerless authorities are to curb the violence remains unclear. The issue of such a large proportion of government authorities perpetrating violence against journalists raises the question in this study of whether these public sector employees are a product of dark networks or whether the culture of law enforce-ment and other related work is one of wielding power through violence and that human rights abuses against journalists simply mirrors how others in society are treated. What is clear is this: According to a Human Rights Watch (2016) Mexico report, during the Peña Nieto administration, “Mexican security forces have been implicated in repeated, serious human rights violations—including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappear-ances, and torture—in the course of efforts to combat organized crime” (para.1).9


Other organizations report similar findings (Amnesty International, 2012, 2016; UN General Assembly, 2013c).

On social media, the severest examples of violence against journalists often were made public and shared. For example, in May 2016 on Twitter, Reporters Without Borders, @RSF_inter, kept a text vigil of the growing number of journalists killed in Mexico: “Mexico: Veracruz reporter becomes sixth journalist murdered this year.” The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas continuously reported on violence against journalists in Latin America and on August 11, 2016, tweeted from @utknight-center, “Mexican journalist threatened for book on state governor; fears for safety . . .” On August 12, 2016, @CPJ Américas posted, “Lo que la Procuraduría mexicana no quiere indagar en el caso Rubén Espinosa” (“What the Mexican prosecutor does not want to investigate in the case of Rubén Espinosa.”).

IGOs also maintained a voice with sustained pressure focused on how Mexico was not meeting international human rights norms. For example, in March 2016, the Organization of American States issued a human rights report about the violence issue in Mexico focused, in part, on violence against journalists (Organization of American States, 2016). Special Freedom of Expression Rapporteurs for the UN and the Organization of American States called on the government of Mexico to protect jour-nalists and news outlets from violence (Organization of American States, 2011). The United Nations News Centre (2011) posted a statement titled, “UN urges stronger protection of Mexican journalists after another three murders.” UNESCO has publicly decried the issue of violence against journalists in Mexico in numerous statements, including eight within seven months in 2016.

Collective Networking, Organizing, and Monitoring

Risse and Sikkink (1999) argue that

the diffusion of international norms in the human rights area crucially depends on the establishment and the sustainability of networks among domestic and transnational actors who manage to line up with international regimes, to alert Western public opinion and Western governments. (p. 5)

A number of transnational and regional organizations, such as Article 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the Inter American Press Association, and domestic organizations, such as Periodistas de a Pié, reported conducting elaborate investigations into attacks, killings, and disappearances of journalists. According to then-director of the transnational Article 19 organization office in Mexico, conducting painstaking investigations associated with these crimes involves documenting and veri-fying facts, corroborating statements, and cross-sourcing. But they also consult with the journalist’s colleagues and friends to see if an alert should be published:

If for some reason the alert would put the journalist himself, his family . . . [at risk], then we don’t publish anything . . . If the alert could help in any way, political pressure,


pressure on the local authorities to do something . . . then we issue an alert, which is like a communiqué with the facts and with the position of Article 19; and that is launched through social media networks, Internet databases, email databases, and we place it on the webpage. [8]

The director of the Mexico City–based Center for Communication and Information about Women noted that some key INGOs, along with prominent domestic NGOs, coordinate campaigns:

When any of these organizations decide to make the alert known, it is because it has already gone through a filter . . . There is a tacit agreement that if the alert is given, then the danger is real. [21]

When we moved beyond the fieldwork in our study, we continued to note that the U.S. government is funding civil society organization work to monitor and respond to attacks against journalists in Mexico. For example, the transnational Article 19, which has a Mexico office, had been chronicling the assaults under a two-year U.S. contract that funds the organization to monitor and document cases of aggression against jour-nalists; conduct outreach to journalists, civil society organizations, and international actors relevant to protecting journalists; and interact with the Mexican government to focus on solution-based approaches to policies and potential tools that journalists may use for self-protection (USAID, 2015a).

Providing Legal Support, Shelter, and Relocation Assistance

Representatives from several transnational and domestic organizations noted the lack of resources for journalists who must be relocated because they have been assaulted, kidnapped, or threatened. A few organizations offer temporary lodging and legal sup-port, but earlier research has indicated that providing a safe environment to threatened journalists is not necessarily standard among news outlets (Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014). At times, journalists’ need for safety extends to protection for their families. The director of Mexico’s Article 19 office described providing both hard and soft forms of protection:

That means measures that make it so that the risk is reduced, through removing [the journalist] from the country or transporting him/her to another place . . . improve his/her infrastructure, his/her home, offices. If it is a campaign to discredit or a legal campaign, we provide legal defense. If the journalist was detained by some authority, we also take the case in terms of legal defense. [8]

Reporters Without Borders gave support to families of some journalists who were murdered and set up meetings with authorities, such as the Special Federal Prosecutor for Crimes Against Journalists. A correspondent for Reporters Without Borders explained that the job is intense and time-consuming because it often involves going


with the families to meet authorities and helping families negotiate their case with the authorities, reviewing their files, and explaining their options [7].

The Mexico-based NGO House of Journalists’ Rights, among others, collaborates with other organizations in initiatives to protect journalists. An attorney with the group noted that when the House of Journalists’ Rights lacks funds to support journalists, it contacts other organizations also looking to help [23].

Providing Training to Journalists

Representatives of UN organizations and INGOs have noted that the security issues for journalists vary from country to country, so programming and training should be tailored to specific threats and contexts rather than using a one-size-fits-all plan (UNESCO, 2013b) [3]. For example, Colombia, where drug traffickers have unleashed similar violence against journalists over the decades, has served as an international case study. Colombia’s methods do not directly translate to Mexico, however, because the context and conditions are different [9]. A senior director for special projects for the International Center for Journalists noted the organization has designed a curricu-lum that “basically wouldn’t probably work anywhere but in Mexico”:

However, it’s giving us light about the nature of threats and how to overcome them when you have a combination of organized crime, drug trafficking, and corruption at the same time in the digital age. [9]

In its plan for 2014 to 2018 in Mexico, USAID noted that the U.S. government will fund human rights training to “a wide variety of stakeholders—including journalists, human-rights defenders, government officials, and police—to prevent future abuses” (USAID, 2015a, p. 6). Although the U.S. Consulate General’s offices around the world allocate resources for outreach to the press as a form of public diplomacy, or “soft power,” they apparently recognized that conditions for the press in Mexico were among the worst in Latin America. The U.S. consulate offices, therefore, created pro-grams to provide the training that journalists in each region asked for [32]. Thus, the consulate in Ciudad Juárez cohosted workshops such as “Silencing the Press: Who Are They? Why Do They Want to Silence Us? and What Can We Do About It?” as well as on how to use social media responsibly and safely. Other U.S. consulate office projects included sponsoring journalists on reporting trips to the United States to focus on issues such as weapons trafficking [32]. Another consulate launched the Cobertura Safe Coverage program with the University of Guadalajara to support cybersecurity for journalists; that program now is free-standing [32]. The USAID reported that it supported activities across 22 Mexican states to train 1,100 journalists in digital secu-rity, self-protection, and human rights-related activities (USAID, 2015a, p. 2).

Several transnational organizations, in cooperation with domestic NGOs, have led professionalization, digital security, and ethics training workshops to help minimize dark network risks to journalists. “Digital and mobile security for Mexican journalists and bloggers” was copublished after a face-to-face survey of journalists and bloggers


from 20 Mexican states found that nearly 70% of the more than 100 participants said they had been threatened or attacked in relation to their work (Sierra, 2013), which other scholars have found to varying degrees in recent years in Mexico (González de Bustamante & Relly, 2014; Hughes et al., 2016; Hughes & Márquez-Ramírez, 2017; Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014). Furthermore, the International Center for Journalists and Freedom House provided support for a real-time interactive platform that allows journalists to securely report attacks online. This tool has been used in Mexico, Iraq, Panama, and Venezuela [10].

A number of organizations assist journalists with individual and newsroom safety protocols. For example, the transnational Article 19 organization’s Mexico office pro-vides GPS, maps, a mobile application that geo-locates evacuation routes and net-works of protection: “All that knowledge is so they can go ahead without needing anyone else” [8]. A representative mentioned as an example, a journalist from the state of Tamaulipas who went to the state of Coahuila to report; the two territories were controlled by different criminal organizations [8].

Using Strategic Pressure

Because our model aims to analyze institutional and social change over time, follow-ing Risse and Sikkink’s work (1999, p. 5), we look for “transnational structure pres-suring” focused on Mexico’s government. The UN Universal Periodic Review is one of the measures we use because in 2013, the Mexican government was to receive an evaluation for its human rights record; the process is conducted for each UN member state. The “Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Mexico” to the Human Rights Council of the UN General Assembly demonstrated global- and state-coalition work. As Table 1 indicates, countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania weighed in with statements and/or recommendations about human rights issues related to journalists in Mexico (UN General Assembly, 2013b). The Report of the Working Group contained 43 references to the safety and security of journalists, as well as references to perpetrators’ impunity from prosecution in Mexico (UN General Assembly, 2013b). The UN member states acknowledged that the Mexican government’s legal and institutional changes to protect journalists were achievements, yet noted the lingering issue of impunity. They urged the government to take steps to investigate and prosecute crimes committed against journalists.

Our research demonstrates that pressure on the Mexican government has been exhibited in both standard and new ways over recent years. At the state level, the U.S. Department of State responded to the violence by holding back funding for the joint Mérida Initiative, a program designated to help fight organized crime, given “complaints that Mexico had not gone far enough to investigate abuse and make the military, which has strongly resisted civilian intrusion in its affairs, publicly account-able”; at that time, more than 4,000 complaints against the military were pending before the human rights commission (Archibold, 2010, paras. 4-5; Ahmed & Schmitt, 2016). In the latest human rights report available, the U.S. Department of State (2015) cited Article 19’s statistics that in the previous six months, 227 cases were


Table 1. UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review Mexico: Country Comments/Recommendations.

Country name Statements and recommendations Page/s

Finland 36. “Finland asked about measures to protect human rights defenders and journalists, especially women and indigenous human rights defenders, and to combat impunity.”

6

Guatemala 39. “Guatemala commended Mexico for its progress in the area of human rights, including the adoption of relevant policies and national plans, and action to investigate and prosecute crimes committed against journalists.”

6

Lithuania 62. “Lithuania noted the establishment of protective mechanisms designed to safeguard human rights defenders and journalists, and expressed concern about reports on threats and violence against them.”

7

Sweden 64. “Sweden noted the continued widespread use of torture and the existing impunity for crimes against journalists despite improvements to the legislation.”

7

The Netherlands 68. “The Netherlands expressed concern about violence against journalists, human rights defenders and women, and stated that access to safe abortion was still insufficient.”

8

Norway 72. “Norway noted the persistence of violence against journalists and human rights defenders and expressed concern about serious human rights violations against undocumented migrants.”

8

Poland 84. “Poland expressed concern about impunity of crimes and about the risks faced by human rights defenders, journalists and NGO activists.”

9

Portugal 85. “Portugal referred to recommendations conveyed during the first review and welcomed measures adopted to prevent acts of torture and ill-treatment. It referred also to violence against women and the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Act.”

9

Austria 127. “Austria inquired about the ongoing impunity for crimes against journalists.”

11

Belgium 130. “Belgium expressed concern about the situation of journalists, despite the establishment of the 2012 federal mechanism for the protection of human rights defenders and journalists.”

12

Brazil 133. “Brazil welcomed measures to investigate violations against human rights defenders and journalists, and expressed concern that military courts still had jurisdiction to try cases of human rights violations committed by military personnel.”

12

Estonia 148.104. “Continue the fight against impunity, especially regarding violence against women, children, human rights defenders, journalists and all other vulnerable groups.”

20

(continued)



Canada 148.116. “Establish effective protections for civil society and journalists, including the prompt and efficient investigation and prosecution of all threats and attacks made against these individuals.”

21

Colombia 148.117. “Strengthen the federal mechanism for the protection of defenders and journalists and provide it with preventive capacity, taking into account the threat posed by organized crime networks against freedom of speech and press.”

21

The Netherlands 148.118. “Strengthen both the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists as well as the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression.”

21

United Kingdom 148.119. “Strengthen and expand the Mechanism to Protect Human Rights Defenders and Journalists including by providing it with adequate resources and powers to carry out its work.”

21

United States 148.120. “Continue to improve implementation of the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Act and the national protection mechanism at the federal and state level.”

21

Norway 148.122. “Ensure an effective implementation of the protection mechanism for journalists and human rights defenders with properly managed funds and trained human resources and that Mexico investigates and prosecutes reported threats, attacks and disappearances.”

21

Czech Republic 148.123. “Provide all necessary support to the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Mechanism and ensure full cooperation and its implementation at state and municipal levels.”

22

Germany 148.123. “Ensure that human rights defenders and journalists are protected and not subject to defamation. The “protection mechanism for human rights defenders and journalists” should be funded appropriately and a clear division of jurisdictional responsibilities between the different levels of government should be achieved.”

22

Hungary 148.123. “Ensure full financial and political support for the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Mechanism, including by allocating to it necessary resources as well as trained and qualified staff.”

22

Belgium 148.123. “Provide real financial and human support for the recent protection mechanisms set up for journalists.”

22

Finland 148.124. “Implement the recommendations by the United Nations Treaty Bodies regarding the protection of human rights defenders and journalists.”

22

(continued)

Table 1. (continued)



France 148.125. “Take appropriate measures to combat violence and harassment against human rights defenders and journalists.”

22

South Korea 148.126. “Take effective measures to prevent any violence against journalists or human rights defenders.”

22

Slovakia 148.127. “Pursue their efforts to reinforce legislative and institutional guarantees for human rights defenders and journalists exercising their right to freedom of expression and strengthen the fight against impunity in this regard.”

22

Tunisia 148.130. “Step up its efforts to guarantee security of human rights defenders and journalists, and to put an end to all impunity in this area.”

22

Spain 148.131. “Ensure the effective implementation of the Protection Mechanism, under the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Act, to reduce impunity, especially the crimes against defenders of the human rights of migrants.”

22

Romania 148.132. “Improve the implementation of the existing framework in order to ensure the protection of human rights defenders and journalists.”

22

Belgium 148.133. “Put an end to threats, attacks and deaths of journalists by allowing for comprehensive and impartial investigations.”

22

Japan 148.134. “Strengthen measures to effectively prevent the violence against journalists and human rights defenders and impunity.”

22

Lithuania 148.135. “Fully and effectively implement the recently adopted laws in order to end threats, attacks and killings of human rights defenders and journalists and ensure prompt and effective investigation to bring those responsible to justice.”

22-23

Slovenia 148.136. “Integrate gender perspective when addressing impunity and lack of safety of journalists and human rights defenders.”

23

Source. UN General Assembly (2013b, pp. 6-23).Note. UN = United Nations.

Table 1. (continued)

registered of intimidation, threats, assaults, arbitrary detentions, and other aggres-sions against journalists. Reflecting on the Mexican government’s response to the violence, a representative for Reporters Without Borders stated, “I don’t know how it is in other countries, but here institutions do not move, do not walk, do not work if there is not pressure” [7].

Network Challenges

Domestic and transnational NGOs appeared to play the most overt role in supporting Mexican journalists at the time of this study. We note that funding streams often came


from organizations that may not have been carrying out the outreach intervention for journalists.

Although some domestic civil society organizations have worked well together and supported one another, we also found examples of poor coordination. Some believe the lack of solidarity stems from the organizational culture of journalism in Mexico. A number of representatives noted that coordination among domestic organizations is not as strong as it is among transnational NGOs, or between transnational and domestic NGOs. Thus, proj-ects sometimes overlap. Several domestic organization representatives in Mexico reported an ongoing problem with competition for resources. In some cases, group sabotage occurs. The cofounder of the Mexican NGO Periodistas de a Pié, meaning “Journalists on the ground,” noted that competition among groups led to organizations not attending protests focused on violence against journalists [14]. She and her colleagues invented an organiza-tion, complete with logo, Los Queremos Vivos (We Want Them Alive).

We started a campaign on Facebook and in social media sites and in other media . . . All the organizations promoted it, an unknown entity.

A few months later, a common call gathered about 15 organizations [14].Disdain for accepting U.S. funding for initiatives, and the general ethical dilemma of

taking money from any government, also poses a challenge in some organizations. However, amid an environment of crises and scarcity of funds for programming, some Mexican orga-nization representatives indicated that funding-source concerns no longer hold the same potency. According to the Press Freedom Director of the Article 19 office in Mexico:

I think the notion that money from abroad is bad and evil is disappearing . . . For example, we receive money from . . . the state department, USAID. And yeah—for those who are anti-American it looks like we are selling our souls to the devil. I believe that in the end, our responsibility is to be transparent about what is done with that money, right? But yes, there has been criticism. One was very funny. They said that it was like getting money from drug traffickers [8].

Several journalists working in domestic-level organizations expressed profound disappointment that international organizations did not follow up after visits to inves-tigate threats and crimes against journalists. In 2014, a Juárez Journalists Network cofounder complained,

We feel abused, like guinea pigs, because we see these things happening with many human rights groups that show up then leave, and we never know what happens. We do not know if what we said requiring support or help got to anyone. We don’t know if it had any impact or if it had any result. So this has made a lot of colleagues stop denouncing, stop commenting because there is no point. [27]

Policy Outcomes Sought by Networks of Organizations

One research question focuses upon organizational network policy advocacy for creat-ing a safer environment for journalists. As violence toward journalists expanded in


Mexico from 2006 to 2016, a small number of intergovernmental, regional, and trans-national organizations ramped up their efforts to work with the government. These groups, including a few domestic NGOs, had a long history of interacting with and negotiating with the Mexican government even before the political shift in ruling party in the year 2000. Thus, the channels were already open for these groups to hold pro-ductive meetings with officials. Some organizations’ representatives told us that these long-term relationships with public officials, political party legislators, and multiple presidential administrations helped place the safety of journalists on the political and administrative agenda in Mexico. A correspondent with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders noted, “We would not be able to meet with the Federal Prosecutor if we didn’t have a great presence in Mexico . . . But there is still a long way to go. And in that sense, I think that there are a lot of efforts we can make in collaboration with other organizations” [7].

One strategy used by the Inter American Press Association and a few others has been to avoid politicizing the issue of violence against journalists [5]. In the years that violence has escalated, the association has met with representatives of the major politi-cal parties to build a multiparty consensus that elevates violence against journalists to a national cause, while also working with human rights attorneys and institutions such as the Ministry of Interior and the Supreme Court [5].

In addition, a small network collective of organizations lobbied for, wrote, and pressed government administrators and politicians for Constitutional amendments, legislation, and policies to provide protection for journalists and to ensure that law enforcement, security forces, and other branches of government received training to reinforce human rights norms [5, 6, 11, 20]. The Committee to Protect Journalists Senior Americas Program Coordinator indicated the organization has maintained a productive dialogue with authorities within the Mexican government about the secu-rity of journalists [6]. The transnational organization has supported initiatives to “cre-ate a special prosecutor’s office to investigate cases against freedom of expression . . . [and] have supported efforts to give federal authorities broader jurisdiction to investi-gate press crimes and freedom of expression cases” [6].

Institutionalizing Human Rights Norms to Protect Journalists From Violence

Keck and Sikkink (1998) find evidence that, by influencing “discursive positions of states” and shaping institutional procedures and policy changes in “target actors,” organizational networks have helped put human rights issues on global and domestic agendas (p. 25). Thus, we examine global indicators that may dem-onstrate whether the Mexican government institutionalized human rights norms in a legal framework to protect journalists from violence. We also study indicators suggesting whether the legal institutions have been internalized by the govern-ment. As the literature notes, these legal instruments may be “tactical conces-sions,” “cosmetic,” or enduring (Risse & Sikkink, 1999, p. 25). In spite of legal and policy institutional advancements, in some cases, backsliding can occur (Risse & Sikkink, 1999).


In 2011, amid growing domestic and international criticism over the lack of prose-cutions by the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression within the Federal Attorney General’s Office, other governmental entities took action. The Mexican Senate and Chamber of Deputies adopted a constitutional amendment to Article 72 with secondary legislation enacted that would allow the fed-eral government to investigate, prosecute, and punish perpetrators of violence against journalists (Carmona, 2016; Griffen & Bonilla Hastings, 2013). Previously, only the states held such authority. The constitutional reform was said to have “strengthened the role of the National Human Rights Commission and elevated Mexico’s obligations under international treaties to the level of constitutional law” (USAID, 2015a, p. 34).

In the same period, a steady stream of news and reports about human rights abuses in Mexico, some at the hands of law enforcement and the military, prompted a host of legis-lative, regulatory, and policy shifts at the federal and state levels. These measures centered on reform and training within law enforcement agencies about the rights of journalists, other citizens, and international norms of engagement (The Federal Police Act of 2009, the Victims Act of 2013, and the Citizens Relations Unit created within the Ministry of Defense). Table 2 contains key institutions adopted by the Mexican government.

By November 2012, amid significant pressure over multiple years, the Mexican government on the federal level established the Mechanism to Protect Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, a regulatory framework designed to establish rapid analysis and responses to serious threats reported by journalists. The Protection Mechanism, which is the implementation measure of the national-level legislation focused on jour-nalists and human rights defender safety, is situated in the Human Rights Unit of the Ministry of Interior (Table 3).

From October 22 to November 1, 2013, Mexico sent a 48-member delegation to Geneva, Switzerland for the Universal Periodic Review of its national human rights record. The delegation included representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defense, the National Commission for Human Rights, and House and Senate representatives. In response to criticisms about human rights issues in Mexico, and especially the lack of protection of journalists, the Mexican government issued a statement that emphasized its “constitutional amend-ments dealing with human rights.” It also mentioned

legislation to ensure the protections of those rights are designed to place the human person at the cent[er] of State action and to contribute to the reinforcement of a culture of human rights in the country. Organized civil society and academia are enthusiastically participating in the process. The country is thus witnessing the greatest expansion of guarantees of individuals’ rights since the passage of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States in 1917. (UN General Assembly, 2013a, p. 2)

Signals of Social Change in Mexico Related to Violence Against Journalists

Following Risse and Sikkink (1999), the final stage of our model includes factors that indicate whether international human rights norms, principles, and rules have been


Table 2. Critical Juncture Outcomes Related to Human Rights and Protection of Journalists in Mexico.

Instrument Rights Critical juncture

Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Journalists

This office was established to investigate and combat crimes perpetrated against journalists and prosecute cases, but only prosecuted one case by 2010 when the office was endowed with greater authority.

February 2006

Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression

The unit received this new name and was given authority to “direct, coordinate and supervise the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed against journalists” (p. 13).

July 2010

Constitutional Amendments

The amendments oblige the state to prevent human rights violations and to investigate them, punish violators, and allow for redress (implementing regulations needed for Article 1, the redress for human rights violations). Amendments

June 2011

Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Act

This legislation entered into force to provide “cooperative use by the federal and state governments of preventative mechanisms designed to safeguard the lives, well-being, liberty and security of persons who are at risk as a consequence of their activities as human rights defenders or journalists” (p. 13).

June 2012

Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression Early Warning System

The policy is “designed to trigger rapid preventative and protection action to shield human rights defenders and journalists from threatened attacks” (p. 14).

November 2012

Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Mechanism

Regulatory framework published to “establish the functioning, coordination, organization, and the procedures” that institutions must follow to implement the Mechanism, which is designed to provide rapid assessment and response to serious threats to journalists (pp. 14, 28).

November 2012

Pact for Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto signed pact to affirm state policy of human rights protection.

December 2012

The Victims Act Law promulgated as the mechanism for implementing Article 1 of the constitution which obliges the state to redress any violations of human rights in Mexico.

January 2013

New Amparo Law Law provides implementation guidance for protecting human rights in the 2011 amendments to the constitution and strengthens legal aspect for protection of human rights.

April 2013

Unit for Prevention, Follow Up, and Analysis

Unit offers risk analysis to journalists and preventative follow-up action plans.

August 2015

Source. United Nations General Assembly (2013a, 2013b, 2013c); Washington Office on Latin America (2016).


Table 3. The Mechanism Structure Within the Mexican Interior Ministry (SEGOB) Designed to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders.

Name of unit Representatives Task

Governing Board

Four representatives from the Executive Branch, four civil society representatives, and a National Human Rights Commission member

Oversees the Mechanism. The chair is from the Interior Ministry is responsible for the Mechanism’s functioning activities and the implementation of measures that protect journalists and human rights defenders.

Consultative Council

Nine journalists, human rights, and civil society representatives

Serves as a civilian monitor of the Mechanism

The National Executive Coordinator

The units are: the Unit for Case Reception and Rapid Reaction, the Risk Evaluation Unit, and the Unit for Prevention, Monitoring, and Analysis.

Coordinates actions among Mechanism areas. Within the Mechanism, there are three units that receive protection requests, process requests, perform risk analysis, and grant responses.

Source. Griffen and Bonilla Hastings (2013, p. 12); Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists (2012); Washington Office on Latin America (2016, p. 16).

implemented—or ignored. Thus, we examine the extent to which the Mexican govern-ment has improved security for Mexican journalists, as this could signal political and social change.

At this stage of the findings (see Figure 2), it is clear that, as violence against jour-nalists increased in Mexico, myriad other nations, UN organizations, and transnational and domestic civil society organizations “challenged” Mexico’s government and pres-sured the administration and Congress “from above” and “from below.” Our model and findings indicate that “sustainable improvements of human rights conditions” related to violence against journalists were primarily instrumentally instituted (Risse & Sikkink, 1999, p. 31), that is, through adopting legislation and policies. In the fol-lowing sections, we evaluate the implementation of these laws and policies and the effectiveness of them, as well as discussing the challenges with analyzing these data, including the limitations of the measurements.

Antipress Violence: Change Over Time

We acknowledge this is early conceptual and empirical work on social outcomes related to policy advocacy that addresses violence against journalists in Mexico. That said, our model utilizes outcomes data that may demonstrate the influence of the legal and policy structural changes reported in the earlier phase of findings. We analyze reported issues of violence over time, measurements related to press freedom that take dark networks and violence into consideration, measurements of government monitor-ing and outreach, impunity in time, and government reforms and policy changes.


Since the Mexican government has been reporting these data, 128 journalists have been killed and disappeared in Mexico between 2000 and 2015 (Procuraduría General de la República, 2016, pp. 2, 5).10 Figure 8 shows that every year in the new millen-nium, journalists have been killed in Mexico. The peak year for journalists being killed was 2010. The number of reported journalists killed began to decline slightly after 2010, in the last two years of the Calderón administration and the period in which human rights became more of an emphasis of the Mérida Initiative funding and other policy measures implemented for journalist protection.

Figure 9 shows that every year from 2004 through 2015, journalists were reported missing. The number of journalists reported missing continued to rise through 2012. The most deadly years for journalists in Mexico, according to government statistics, were between 2006 and 2013.

Mexico’s news media’s status has remained “not free” since 2011 (Freedom House, 2010-2016). Between 2010, when the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression was renamed and re-established, and 2015, when the govern-ment’s Unit for Prevention, Follow up, and Analysis was launched to address violence against journalists, there were 1,587 threats and attacks against journalists in Mexico (Article 19, 2016). Article 19 (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) reported that physi-cal assaults, intimidation, arbitrary detentions, and threats more than doubled from 155 cases reported in 2010 to 397 cases reported in 2015. We note that as the number of deaths and disappearances began to decline, reports of threats and assaults continued to increase. As Figure 10 demonstrates, the number of threats and assaults reported to the Mexican Interior Ministry are substantially lower than those reported to Article 19, yet even those reported to the government grew by 44% from the first full year of reporting of 59 cases to 85 cases in 2015 (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016, p. 8).

Figure 8. Number of journalists killed in Mexico (2000-2015).Source. Procuraduría General de la República (2016, p. 2).


The phenomenon of an increase in reported threats and assaults, happening at the same time as a declining number of journalists killed since the early warning system and Protection Mechanism were established in 2012, could have several explanations. One, journalists may be more at ease with reporting these safety concerns, or be more

Figure 9. Number of journalists missing in Mexico (2000-2015).Source. Procuraduría General de la República (2016, p. 5).

Figure 10. Number of attacks against journalists in Mexico (2010-2015).Source. Article 19 (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016); Secretaría de Gobernación (SEGOB; 2016, p. 8).Note. Attacks include physical assaults, intimidation, arbitrary detention, and threats. SEGOB’s annual data are available between 2013 and 2015.


knowledgeable about organizations that monitor attacks or offer assistance. Another explanation is that the number of threats and assaults may indeed be on the rise while deaths and disappearances are either actually declining during the Peña Nieto admin-istration or not reported. Qualitatively, in-depth interviews for this study and intergov-ernmental, state, transnational, and domestic NGO reports suggest that the conditions for journalists may have worsened.

According to a 2015 report by the transnational organization, Article 19, the num-ber of attacks in Mexico on journalists and human rights defenders rose precipitously in the first two years of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term, which runs from 2012 to 2018. In the six years that his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, was in power, 182 reported attacks on journalists was the per-year average (Article 19, 2015). Under Peña Nieto, even after the protection legislation and policies were put in place, the average number of reported attacks was 328 per year (Article 19, 2015). Put a different way, during the first two years of the Peña Nieto administration, a journalist was attacked every 26.7 hours; during the Calderón administration, when general violence was at a high, a journalist was attacked every 48.1 hours (Article 19, 2015).

The Protection Mechanism, the Early Alert System, and Change

The UN recommends that every country establish a mechanism to protect journal-ists. The Special Rapporteur for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights distinguishes among physical measures of protection and immediate mea-sures of protection, legal measures of protection (including legislation and policies), and political measures of protection. The latter include the political will to adopt and fund the implementation of legislation and policies, as well as reforming the crimi-nal justice system and judiciary so they will investigate, prosecute, and monitor progress [1].

In Mexico, the Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Protection Act, adopted in 2012, legally requires the federal and state governments to offer preventative safe-guards—a Protection Mechanism—to journalists who are at risk because of their work. Mexico was the second nation in the region, after Colombia, to adopt the Protection Mechanism (Organization of American States, 2015b, p. 182). Brazil, Honduras, and Guatemala were in the process at the time of the fieldwork for this study [31]. But critics claim that Mexico’s governmental progress on advancing the Protection Mechanism office’s work has been slow. The director of the well-respected Center for Social Communication stated, “The Mechanism took a long time. If the alarm went off in 2006, we are talking about . . . a five-year delay. And this is despite Mexico getting a lot of recommendations, specifically about the protection of journal-ists” [20]. By 2015, all 31 states of the Mexican Republic had signed agreements to collaborate and coordinate the protective measures for journalists and human rights defenders, and 34 sites were authorized for administering protection and security mea-sures (Organization of American States, 2015b, pp. 184-185).

The former head of the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists regards the Mechanism as a relatively complex structure:


The law also establishes what a protection measure is, what type of protection measures should be granted. It establishes the procedures for disagreeing with the decision of the Mechanism. And it establishes the procedures for carrying out risk analysis, the evaluation of risk analysis for the people who request protection from the mechanism. [31]

The Protection Mechanism’s three units accept requests for protection and analyze the risk to journalists and human rights defenders. Then, as appropriate, they grant protection for urgent measures of security (evacuation, bodyguards and security teams, property security, and temporary relocation), provide safety measures and individual-ized security protocols (security locks, office and residence cameras, satellite phones, armored cars, automobiles with bullet-proof glass, bullet-proof vests, and other safety materials), and provide other violence prevention and security measures (self-protec-tion courses, human rights observers, instruction manuals on safety) (Carmona, 2016; Griffen & Bonilla Hastings, 2013; Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, 2012).

Complaints about the Protection Mechanism have included concern about case risk analysis delays, disadvantaged treatment by those not accompanied by civil society organization representatives (Washington Office on Latin America, 2016), malfunc-tioning mobile devices for emergencies such as inoperable panic buttons, and the out-sourcing of assistance to private firms. All of this “further reduces trust among journalists” (Carmona, 2016, p. 5). After an information-gathering trip to Mexico, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported that the government had “no specific protocols in place for the analysis and implementation of material protective measures . . . multiple instances and lack of coordination among the different institu-tions in charge of supporting the protective measures and follow up,” and problems with access to “data on the number of cases received, length of the procedures, as well as information on the main reasons for deciding not to process or to reject some cases” (Organization of American States, 2015b, p. 187). Furthermore, we note that multiple governmental units in Mexico collect data on violence against journalists and pro-grams to address security and safety. Categories and methods of compiling the data vary as do the types of issues, a factor that makes it a challenge for evaluators and researchers to study progress over time.

From October 2012 through April 2016, the Protection Mechanism received 226 requests from journalists for assistance, turned down 42 of them, and provided support in 184 of those cases; an additional 132 case requests for human rights defenders were acted upon during that time (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016). In 2015, 41 cases were lodged with the government Protection Mechanism compared with 13 cases in 2013. Table 4 indicates the number of aggressions reported by journalists to the government was the highest in 2015, the last full year reported in the table. Government data indi-cate the reports to the government were largely threats (62 out of 85 case beneficiaries of service), followed by physical aggression (21 cases) and two reported cases of kidnapping in 2015 (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016).

Table 5 offers the government breakdown of the 788 cases that have been investi-gated from July 2010 to March 31, 2016, for crimes against journalists and human


rights defenders (an average of 11.44 cases a month; Procuraduría General de la República, 2016).

The Early Alert System, a warning system through the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression, was established to “trigger rapid preventa-tive and protection action to shield human-rights defenders and journalists from threat-ened attacks” (UN General Assembly, 2013a, p. 14). The Early Alert System was designed to react to imminent danger and to protect journalists and human rights defenders in “an efficient and real way,” which is less expensive than investigating after a crime has been committed [30]. In the Early Alert System, threats (306 cases) were the category of crimes against journalists and human rights defenders that prompted the greatest number of investigations.

The government of Mexico has provided precautionary measures (N = 528) to those who filed requests for assistance from July 5, 2010, through March 31, 2016. On average, 7.65 precautionary measures a month were offered by the government for the nearly 6 years studied (Procuraduría General de la República, 2016). The majority of precautionary measures over the nearly six-year period of time were responses to police calls (n = 213) and residential and household patrols (n = 177). The third largest category was supplying manuals on crime prevention (n = 108).

The Protection Mechanism Governing Board also approves both infrastructural and precautionary security measures. Table 6 provides Interior Ministry data from January 2014 through April 2016. Of the 2,523 infrastructure measures provided during those 28 months, in highest demand were surveillance cameras (n = 784), protective lights (n = 610), extra security locks (n = 476), door sensors (n = 243), and closed-circuit TVs (n = 154) (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016). The average number of infrastruc-ture items provided by the Protection Mechanism per month for the period data was available is 90.11 items. The figures clearly are higher for infrastructure protection than precautionary measures over time.

Even with all of the security protocols in place, safety remains a challenge for many journalists in Mexico. The head of the Juárez Journalist Association in the northern Mexican border state of Chihuahua noted that transnational and domestic civil society organizations that focus on protective networks for Mexican journalists have been

Table 4. Probable Aggressors Toward Journalist Beneficiaries of the Protection Mechanism.

YearPublic

servantConfidential

private citizen Unidentified Total

2012 (October-December) 3 1 0 42013 24 17 13 542014 20 16 7 432015 31 36 41 1082016 (January-April) 5 6 4 15Total 83 76 65 224

Source. Secretaría de Gobernación (2016, p. 7).


Table 5. Breakdown of Investigations of Crime Against Freedom of Expression in Mexico.

Crime 2010a 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016b Total

Abuse of authority 11 31 18 26 32 18 1 137Unlawful access to equipment and

information systems— 1 2 3 2 1 — 9

Breaking and entering — — — 2 3 1 — 6Threats 11 45 45 66 67 64 8 306Attacks on lines of communication — — 2 1 1 — — 4Attacks against honor or reputation 1 — — — — — — 1Acts against administration of justice — — — — 1 — — 1Damage to property 2 5 5 16 5 6 — 39Organized crime — — — — 1 1 — 2Charges filed for possible criminal acts — — — — 2 — — 2Misuse of public services — — — 1 — — — 1Illegal profiteering — 1 — — — — — 1Extortion — — — — 1 — — 1Falsified statements or testimony — — 1 — — — — 1Falsified documents — — 1 — 1 — — 2Homicide 4 13 12 15 2 8 1 55Tapping private communication — — 1 — — 1 — 2Intimidation — 2 — — — — — 2Injuries 2 12 9 11 15 9 — 58Damage of government property — — — — 10 — — 10Illegal detention 1 9 14 17 3 7 1 52Robbery 4 5 6 18 11 10 1 55Kidnapping — 1 — — 4 2 — 7Attempted to damage private property — — — 1 — — — 1Attempted extortion — — — — 1 — — 1Attempted homicide 1 6 — — 4 2 1 14Attempted illegal detention — 1 1 1 — — — 3Attempted robbery — — — — 1 — — 1Attempted kidnapping — — — — — 1 — 1Violation of the Federal Law for

Firearms and Explosives1 — 6 1 — 1 — 9

Copyright violation 1 — 1 1 1 — — 4Total 41 132 124 180 168 132 13 788

Source. Procuraduría General de la República (2016, p. 14).aJuly 5 to December 31, 2010.bJanuary 1 to March 31, 2016.

clearly told during meetings that no program, project, or system to protect journalists can be created without involving the government:

If you need protection against a drug dealer, the only one who can offer that protection is the police, and the police are part of the government. We cannot create an armed group of journalists to protect ourselves, right? So we have to get the government involved, even though sometimes it is the government creating the aggressions. There is no logic, it makes no sense sometimes, but that is the way things are. [28]

Advocates also have been concerned about the disparity in the implementation of security and protection protocols. Article 19 representatives can get responses from


the government quickly; for example, the Article 19 director in Mexico mentioned getting bodyguards six hours after a threat. So, the director concluded, “Clearly, if they want to, they can” [8]. However, the president of the Juárez Journalist Association, representing journalists in a city that once was the most violent in the country, says that the responses from the government are inconsistent:

Before they used to take five hours to activate this protocol, and those are very important five hours during which anything might happen. The last protocol we activated, they took a week. It happened because there were some changes in the judicial system. Now, any victim that requests help from the police has to go through a socio-economic and psychological evaluation . . . Journalists and their families have been subjected to this and then only receive protection for a day or two . . . So these things we have to re-evaluate, because instead of becoming more effective, we are going backwards. [28]

Money is also a concern. Funding to operate the Protection Mechanism has come from the Mexican federal government, business and private donations, and other fed-eral institutions (Griffen & Bonilla Hastings, 2013). Both outsiders and participants in this study deemed the initial 2012 budget for the Office of the Special Prosecutor of US$176,400 as inadequate (Carmona, 2016; Griffen & Bonilla Hastings, 2013). According to one report, the funds for the Protection Mechanism were not available to authorities until 2014; the Mechanism office was in “crisis because of lack of resources and the resignation of part of its staff over poor working conditions and an environ-ment of high pressure” (Carmona, 2016, p. 4). By 2016, the Mechanism had US$20 million in a trust fund and the Office was reorganized with the advisory collaboration of Freedom House and the cooperation of the United States government.

Following a site study to Mexico, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted the Protection Mechanism needed to be strengthened by addressing “long-term financial sustainability; promoting the mechanism in the federal entities, where it is unknown”; coordinating with local authorities, “some of whom reportedly lack the political will to collaborate”; and by taking steps “to overcome the lack of trust on the part of some sectors of its target population” (Organization of American States, 2015a, p. 13). According to Freedom House (2016b, p. 6), while some journal-ists have benefitted from the program, many challenges remain for journalists who

Table 6. Infrastructure Measures Approved by the Protection Mechanism Governing Board.

Measure

Closed circuit

TVSurveillance

camerasAlarm system

Door sensors

Motion detection sensors

Fire extinguisher

Extra security

locksVideo

intercomProtective

lights

Electric fence

system

2014 93 458 35 185 78 13 242 19 382 182015 58 311 20 42 41 0 219 17 215 72016 (January-

April)3 15 3 16 5 0 15 0 13 0

Total 154 784 58 243 124 13 476 36 610 25

Source. Secretaría de Gobernación (2016, p. 13).


seek protections through the federal government’s Protection Mechanism, including weak “political will, bureaucratic rivalries, and lack of training” with reported delays and “inadequate safeguards” for those seeking assistance. At the time of our study, the special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression said her office hoped to strengthen the Early Alert System “as quickly as possible, and to continue to maintain the relationship that we have with the diverse non-governmental organizations, [which offer] good feedback to improve the service of the prosecutor’s office, its investigative work, the capacitation of its staff, etcetera” [30].

The former head of the Protection Mechanism office noted criticisms of the mecha-nism and the challenges that it faces; as a result, he said, the mechanism is just one more tool, only one instrument, for protecting journalists:

It can’t be the end point in the game . . . There are other structural factors in Mexico that must be debated and discussed regarding the need to protect journalists—like violence, like fighting criminal organizations, like the public recognition of the work that [human rights] defenders and journalists fulfill in a democracy, like the investigations into attacks, which is an issue that depends on the attorney general of the republic. [31]

Significant threats to freedom of expression extended beyond individual journalists and news organizations. Representatives of three advocacy organizations were the tar-gets of growing intimidation over the years after legislation to protect journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico was enacted. Article 19’s Mexico office website was shut down for a week after it was hit by cyberattacks, just before the organiza-tion’s annual report on press freedom was to be released (Freedom House, 2016b). It was not the first threat that the organization had received. In 2013, a death threat letter was left at the Article 19 office in Mexico City for its director. Prior to that, the director had received a written threat while on a fact-finding mission to track crimes against journalists in the state of Sinaloa, the home state of “El Chapo” Guzman [8]. The mes-sage left in the hotel room stated, “You could be sleeping when we arrive and shoot you in the head” [8]. The office of the National Center of Social Communication, a group that monitors attacks on journalists, has been ransacked and robbed (Freedom House, 2016b). Reporters Without Borders correspondent Balbina Flores Martínez “received threatening phone calls at her office” (Freedom House, 2015, p. 4).

Federal and State Governments, Trust, and Change

In a document providing a pilot for a framework designed to support security for jour-nalists around the world, a UN organization noted wide recognition of the fact that the state has primary responsibility for the protection of journalists, as with any other citi-zens (UNESCO, 2013b).

It is also necessary for the State to investigate threats and acts of violence against journalists effectively; to ensure control over its military, judiciary and law-enforcing agency based on rule of law; and to proactively counter impunity. (UNESCO, 2013b, p. 9)


In Mexico, before the legislation was adopted for the protection of journalists and human rights defenders, 90% of attacks on journalists fell under the purview of state jurisdiction rather than the federal level [31]. A former Protection Mechanism director acknowledged many questions to be answered related to the investigative work focused on these crimes:

How are investigations on crimes and attacks being done? What’s happening with police forces? There are no suitable protocols for the use of force . . . In many cases, we continue to see state and municipal police, or even federal police, continuing to attack photojournalists, journalists, threatening them. [31]

People who have provided testimony about utilizing the Protection Mechanism in Mexico emphasize the considerable distrust of people under the protective mecha-nism, as well as the violence they still face (Organization of American States, 2015b, p. 183). Another report stated that the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression “has been hesitant to assert its jurisdiction over such crimes without state officials’ approval” (Freedom House, 2016b, p. 2). The director of the Article 19 office in Mexico noted, “The issue with the Mechanism is that it would have to be linked to the political will of the local authorities . . . As long as there is no change of will in terms of the states, I think nothing will change” [8].

Further complicating matters is the weakness of local prosecutors’ offices in many jurisdictions, largely because the offices are controlled by state government. According to an attorney with Casa de Derechos Periodistas (House of Journalists’ Rights),

The local attorney’s office depends on a local governor who is the head of a political group that governs a state. This political group is spread in all the government spheres, so it becomes a political group that is going to defend its members. Mexican society does not trust its authorities and this is why we have to look for so many judicial forums to attend a case that could be seen by local authorities. [23]

State and local prosecutors often are the ones to investigate attacks, and critics note the Protection Mechanism must be studied from that context [31]. Moreover, many prosecutors’ offices and municipal police departments in Mexico are infiltrated by organized crime (Organization of American States, 2015a, 2015b). The Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression also mentioned the difficulty of the task of training public sector workers, including law enforcement, about the nor-mative standards for interacting with journalists and ensuring their safety and security [30]. In a 2015 preliminary report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted, “The cartels and police and military forces, when acting outside the law, are responsible for a large number of deaths, disappearances, and acts of violence” (Organization of American States, 2015a, p. 9).

Others agree that the future of the Protection Mechanism rests with the political will of the government in agencies that are beyond the reach of the corrupting outside forces of dark networks. Thus, as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stresses, “It is essential to ensure that judges at all levels, as well as Supreme Court


Justices, are independent of the political branches of the State, particularly during their selection and appointment process” (Organization of American States, 2015a, p. 14).

The Public Policy Issue of Impunity and Societal Change in Time

Impunity for killing, harming, or threatening journalists is a vexing public policy and governance issue. Douglass North (2004) would categorize this as an informal institu-tion, that is, as information transmitted through systems with foundations in culture and tradition. Heyns and Srinivasan (2013) argue that “all indications are that impu-nity is intentional” (p. 326). As UNESCO (2013b) notes, when impunity has not been addressed for crimes committed against journalists, the prospects for “safety of jour-nalists will never be resolved” (p. 4). On the global governance level, impunity for killing journalists has become a widely acknowledged problem (Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014; Tumber, 2011; Waisbord, 2002, 2007).

In global reports over the last 10 years, regardless of whether the author is the U.S. government, other nations, UN organizations, or transnational civil society organiza-tions, Mexico continues to be described as one the most dangerous places in the world to work as a journalist. According to the Washington Office on Latin America (2016, p. 12), “Approximately 98 percent of [all] crimes committed in Mexico remain unre-solved.” Mexico’s impunity index status for not prosecuting perpetrators of crimes against journalists was 10th worst in the world in 2008, when the Committee to Protect Journalists (2008) launched the measurement, and sixth worst (just below Afghanistan, and just above South Sudan) in 2016 (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2016b). The number of backlogged investigations with the Protection Mechanism, in the five years the office has been tracking figures, quadrupled to 177 cases (Figure 11); the number of investigations initiated by the government declined by 35% from the peak year in

Figure 11. Government investigations initiated and backlogged.Source. Procuraduría General de la República (2016, p. 8).


2013 to 2015, the last full year data were available (Procuraduría General de la República, 2016). Freedom of expression advocacy organizations have criticized the governmental commitment to the Protection Mechanism as slow and insufficient since it was instituted (Freedom & House, 2016a, 2016b).

In the last three full years reported by the government of Mexico (2013-2015), the Protection Mechanism Governing Board met an average of 12 times a year (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016). The number of cases the Board examined in a year increased more than sevenfold from 40 cases in 2013 to 327 cases in 2015 (Secretaría de Gobernación, 2016). The Protection Mechanism, itself, lacks the authority to investigate crimes against journalists itself. But the federal deputy attorney general for human rights sits on the Mechanism’s Governing Board and can push federal investigations and coordinate with local authorities to ensure investigations are carried out (Washington Office on Latin America, 2016).

However, serious roadblocks to investigations remain. An Inter-American Commission on Human Rights site visit to Mexico confirmed the general environment of impunity in Mexico; crimes against journalists are not an exception (Organization of American States, 2015b). Furthermore, the Commission noted, another problem “is the wrongful influence of organized crime over the judicial system and police officers with illegal pressure to change the course of investigations” (Organization of American States, 2015b, p. 181). As Freedom House (2016a) reported, security for journalists is highly problematic and “members of organized crime have persisted in their attempts to infiltrate local governments in order to ensure their own impunity” (p. 6).11

Noting Mexico’s institutions dedicated to the defense and protection of journalists, a representative for Reporters Without Borders said,

The big question is then, “Why do they keep killing journalists? Or, why do they keep threatening journalists?” Perhaps the answer is that these institutions have not been strong enough or responsible enough to give an answer. So, then, that’s a great barrier. [7]

The system for investigating crimes against journalists often is riddled with preju-dice. As we have found with our research and as news reports note, Mexican security authorities often speculate that journalists were killed because they interacted with cartel members or because they were investigating high-level official corruption and connections with organized crime groups (Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014). These assumptions must change, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression:

Every single case of the harassment and physical attacks against the press has to begin under the hypothesis that it was done because they are journalists and because of their journalistic work. So they cannot begin by establishing prejudice and deciding that they will themselves identify a priori on who did it or what happened. [1]

Governmental Reform

The institutionalization of global human rights norms (legal structures), compelling research establishes, is “more likely to be implemented and complied with in the


domestic context, if they resonate or fit with existing collective understandings embed-ded in domestic institutions and political cultures” (Risse & Ropp, 1999, p. 271). The literature is apt, given the context in which new institutional designs are implemented, given Mexico’s history, and bureaucratic and political traditions (Hall & Taylor, 1996; Steinmo & Thelen, 1992; Thelen, 1999). All these factors play a role in institutional development in Mexico related to both the political will to affect change and the capacity of the bureaucracy, including street-level law enforcement, to implement change in practices related to violence against journalists. Another critical component of social change, Risse and Ropp (1999) note, is public demonstration of outrage at violence and human rights abuses, including violence against journalists.

Drawing on Grossman’s (2012) suggestions about “ideal-type” structures to address the policy issue of violence against journalists, we focus below on indicators of insti-tutionalized and social change related to the federal government, the state, and Mexican society. We also highlight areas for future research.

Institutional Development and Reform

The evidence indicates that the Mexican government’s initiatives, such as legislation and the Protection Mechanism, have fallen short in providing journalists with the pro-tection they need. Nonetheless, ongoing governmental efforts to effect social change through policies and practices could be considered progress, because they do help institutionalize a shift toward initiatives designed to protect journalists. Outside donors funded, and are monitoring some of these initiatives, however, and this raises impor-tant questions about the Mexican government’s commitment to the cause. For exam-ple, the former head of the Protection Mechanism office stated that in the two years of its creation, the office’s 18-person staff still could not handle all of its national-level cases, especially given insufficient training in risk analysis:

That structure must be strengthened in terms of personnel. And also, the process of training must continue. Freedom House, for example, has been doing very important work of strengthening the personnel of the Mechanism with the experience from a group of Colombian experts in risk analysis. And risk analyses are, well, processes that are technical, complex. An analysis of risk implies a whole series of actions and activities that are very specific, very technical. [31]

The USAID (2015b, p. 2) noted its own “key role” in supporting the Mexican gov-ernment’s attempt to provide protection to more than 400 human rights defenders and journalists. The USAID, it claimed, was supporting criminal justice sector reform to assist the Mexican government in building “capacity to assist victims of human rights abuses and train criminal justice sector operations on human rights protection” (USAID, 2015b, p. 1). USAID has funded, to 2018, various activities, including work with “journalists to increase their knowledge of the reform and enhance their capacity to better inform public opinion on issues related to the criminal justice reform” (USAID, 2015a, p. 43).


In 2014, more than 1,000 Mexican judges, bailiffs, public defenders, judicial advi-sors, lawyers, judicial office directors, and others received training related to freedom expression and protection of journalists in a five-week Massive Open Online Course (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, 2015). The program, which is expected to be expanded to the rest of Latin America [1], emphasized journalists’ safety in the context of a global legal framework for freedom of expression (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, 2015; UNESCO, 2016a). In 2014, the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression stated that more than 100 public officials and police had been trained about the journalist and human rights defender protection legislation [30]. The task remaining is immense. For example, in one state, as many as 500 municipalities have officers and public sector workers at the local and state levels who need training; “that would be almost the work of a whole year if it had to be done with everyone present” [30].

In 2015, judges in the northern Mexico border state of Coahuila, one of the states with the largest number of journalist disappearances, got training through that Massive Open Online Course (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, 2016; Procuraduría General de la República, 2015). The following year, more than 6,000 magistrates, judges, and others across 21 judicial systems predominantly in Latin America and the Caribbean12 received online training on the role of the judiciary in investigating and prosecuting crimes against journalists, and in enforcing the laws. The program was supported by the government of Sweden, the Ibero-American Judicial Summit, the Latin American Network for Schools of Judges, the Foundation for Press Freedom, and other regional institutions (UNESCO, 2016a). The work fits squarely with the global UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. Among action outcomes, the UN plan lists training personnel in domestic criminal justice systems “to function effectively and efficiently with respect to journalistic safety and impunity”; it also mentions “training the trainers” manuals and adapting these manuals to local needs (UNESCO, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, & UN Development Program, 2013, p. 14).

In many parts of the world, public sector employees are being trained on the rights inherent in freedom of expression and, by extension, the rights of journalists to perform their duties in a safe environment. For example, local security forces and members of the judiciary in Nepal got nation-specific training on handling threats and violence against journalists (UN, 2015). In Tunisia, 90 officers from police, Emergency Preparedness, and the National Guard, along with 700 law enforcement cadets and officers, received training on safety for journalists. In Jordan, workshops for judges addressed interna-tional standards and conventions on freedom of expression and the press.

A major objective in a Mexico–U.S. agreement associated with the Mérida Initiative is monitoring and evaluating violence, safety, and security for journalists. In its “Country Development Cooperation Strategy” document, the U.S. government sug-gested auditing queries for the end of the funding period in 2018, such as the following: How has the Government of Mexico’s “provision of protection measures to journalists and human rights defenders at-risk changed as a result of USAID project interven-tions?”; “To what extent are journalists and human rights defenders throughout Mexico


better-equipped in self-protection measures?”; “To what extent is the Protection Mechanism for Journalists and Human Rights Defenders functioning effectively with adequate staff and budget, as a result of USAID assistance?”; What gaps require fol-low-up interventions?; and are nongovernmental actors—the private sector, and the media—“working more closely to address corruption as a result of USAID interven-tions?” (USAID, 2015a, p. 9). The ultimate question, indicated by domestic and global organizational representatives, is twofold: Will the violence against journalists and oth-ers abate, and will the government of Mexico increase the number of investigations and prosecutions of dark networks perpetrating crimes against journalists?

A former director for Article 19’s Mexico office suggested that there is uncer-tainty and domestic apathy, or compassion fatigue, that journalists within Mexico face as the violence against their profession continues and as organized crime groups battle for turf:

Impunity continues and it is practically absolute . . . Impunity is based on and feeds on the absence of political will to resolve the problem . . . The journalistic community is concerned. The international human rights community is concerned. But the ones who are not concerned is Mexican society. [8]

The director listed an additional and worrying challenge, the weariness of donors: “When the interest of donors runs out, who knows what will happen?” [8]

Discussion

Violence against journalists has emerged on the global level as a human rights issue. This research investigates the organizational networks that address this growing con-cern, the initiatives for political and social change, and the early governmental and societal outcomes in response to the collective action and network organizational pres-sure. We introduced a qualitative model to study how advocacy for press safety in insecure environments evolved as an international challenge, and applying the model to one case, we examined Mexico’s push to adopt legal institutions and social change that would promote journalists’ safety and human rights.

Our model provides a framework to study networks of nonstate and state organiza-tions that address violence against journalists, and to evaluate antiviolence and anti-impunity advocacy campaigns and tactics. We explore whether Mexico indeed had, as the model suggested in the early stage, ineffective state governance and state-level denial of human rights abuses, and if concessions and institutionalized changes (such as legal institutions) did occur. Then, in a final phase that includes more outcome vari-ables, we ask whether journalists were in fact safer and more secure than before the legal institutions were adopted. Given that in the last phase of our model the global community work recedes while domestic NGOs take over the role of exerting pressure on the government, we examine this in the case of Mexico.

We found a global initiative to recognize that journalists’ right to be safe in their work is part and parcel of seeing freedom of expression as a human right, a tenet of


declarations and covenants signed by countries around the world over the decades. The global nature of this type of research reinforces the importance of including frameworks that go beyond the newsroom when considering safety, for these “medi-ated spaces” (Reese, 2015) are increasingly important to studying the issue of violence against journalists. As the former director of the Mexican Association of the Right to Information put it, “NGOs have contributed such important work that . . . the govern-ment can no longer leave them out of the debate” [16].

Our research suggests that, at the global level, what prompted the creation of a master action plan for journalist safety and increased attention to the impunity issue was the increased number of journalists attacked or killed in Mexico and around the world. Simultaneously, networks of IGOs and the United States engaged in building institutions of safety and security, and pressured the Mexican government to be more accountable. As we note above, Mexico has experienced myriad critical junctures on this issue over the last decade.

Certainly these findings lead to important questions that have been raised in other fields, including, why do only some countries appear on the global advocacy agenda for violence against journalists? Other scholars have highlighted the prominence of those in the network pressing for attention (Carpenter, 2007; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Although our qualitative study cannot produce generalizations, we would suggest that strategic geopolitical factors, such as global news coverage, social media, and location of countries involved in interventions, also make a difference.

Again, we treat “dark networks,” those working outside of the law, as a major influ-ence, a factor that must be included in journalism research; “dark networks” should be tied to the growing number of oppressive environments around the world that are emerging in addition to long-studied authoritarian regimes (Kim, 2010; Raab & Milward, 2003; Waisbord, 2002). Although Article 19 (2016) found that public author-ities were responsible for nearly half of the abuses against journalists in Mexico, we note that many assaults on the rights of journalists are committed by “dark networks.” This would apply to other countries. Dark network actors, such as militias, para-mili-tary groups, cartels, mafia, gangs, and terror organizations, “have morphed into a quasi-political force” (Griffen & Bonilla Hastings, 2013, p. 4). In Mexico, the compli-cated policy issue of quelling violence against journalists has played out against a backdrop of explosive growth in organized crime; the number of major trafficking organizations has grown from four in 2006 to more than 20 major groups in less than a decade (Beittel, 2013). As our evidence shows, the Mexico case is an important one because we can see how organizations with other missions, such as the UNODC, have become involved with a press safety network on a global scale.

Although the UN global plan for journalists’ safety is a formidable structure, the UN’s implementation review report for the 2013-2014 period indicates that although the UN General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, the Security Council, and UNESCO played a large role in the safety plan work, other UN bodies’ participation “remains relatively low” (UN, 2015, p. 18). Moreover, the implementation of the UN global safety plan for journalists comes at a time when UNESCO has had a “severe reduction” in its budget13 and has cut human resources in member countries, thus


reducing the ability of UNESCO, as the leading UN agency on the plan, to “optimize its contribution to UN national strategies and internal coordination mechanisms” (UN, 2015, p. 18).

The UN safety plan outlines how, by monitoring implementation of the law, pro-moting safety issues, and offering training and support, civil society organizations can help improve conditions for journalists reporting in risky environments. Domestic and transnational NGOs do this, and more. However, the overall domestic group mobiliza-tion and pressure on the government that the model suggests was quite weak. Human rights NGOs have been “wary of and cynical about government rhetoric and co-opta-tion” because of prior experiences in Mexico (Staudt, Payan, & Kruszewski, 2009, p. 108). We found that, in Mexico, domestic groups offer training, monitor attacks and killings, and produce reports that are picked up by transnational organizations or news outlets around the world. They also provide moral support and relocation assistance, and raise funds on a small scale for displaced journalists or their families. Only a few of the more prominent domestic organizations participate in drafting or lobbying for legislation to improve journalist and human rights defender safety. When this hap-pened, it was in concert with transnational organizations. The few public protests attempted had low attendance, in part, according to study participants, because domes-tic civil society groups saw themselves as competitors chasing limited resources. Study participants pointed out that few of the more than 200 human rights organiza-tions in Mexico focus specifically on journalists’ human rights issues.

Among domestic NGOs in the study, a preponderance of press rights groups appeared to struggle to operate because they were run by volunteers who were also full-time journalists. Some of the human rights literature indicates that those in the strongest position to advance social change are fully employed with NGO work.

Funding streams can also influence the type of projects undertaken. We found that funded domestic organizations, not surprisingly, seemed to have the greatest capacity to carry out multiple projects. This is important, as it may be an influence inherent to other research contexts, and could shape the outcome findings in the model when applied.

Our research findings suggest that organizations that pressured the Mexican gov-ernment to undertake institutional reform were able to leverage public awareness cre-ated by alerts, social media, and news reports. This helped place violence against journalists on the global agenda. However, as noted in the UN journalist safety plan, approaches to creating structural reform and journalist protection are country specific. In Mexico, for example, safety protocols varied throughout the country, after consulta-tion with experts from other countries, including Colombia, about what has worked elsewhere. Domestic organization representatives indicated that, unlike in Colombia’s collaborative journalistic culture, unity among Mexico’s professional organizations was weak; lack of common cause hindered work to protect journalists. These findings are consistent with other scholars’ quantitative research work in Colombia and Mexico (Hughes et al., 2016; Hughes & Márquez-Ramírez, 2017).

In this type of study, important observations are possible at each stage of the model. We can see the transnational and domestic groups, along with IGOs and governments,


evolve into a network and exert continuous pressure for institutional change. We can observe new legal and administrative structures, from constitutional amendments to the creation of a Protection Mechanism for journalist safety. We can see the expansion of civil service and judicial reforms, and widespread training opportunities. All these steps serve as institutional benchmarks for the potential for social change. These mea-sures, though difficult to put into practice, are the most visible part of the process. The Mexican government’s enacting of legislation, policies, and administrative changes related to the security and protection of journalists (2010-2015) closely parallels the UN safety plan for journalists. Nevertheless, we also note that, as Aikin Araluce (2009) suggests, in some places, institutional changes are advanced as a form of “instrumental logic that seeks to alleviate pressure, rather than a real will to change the situation” (pp. 151-152).

The depth of the social change component in our model and findings is challenging to assess. As Staudt (2014) noted importantly, “Governments are not monoliths, they are fragmented and disjointed, not only at and among national-level agencies, but from local to regional state, and national levels” (p. 167). A process is in place at the federal level, through the Protection Mechanism, to monitor killings, assaults, and threats on journalists and to offer journalists support. Although we did not systematically track the Mexican government’s response to every crime against the profession, we can see that the authorities did not investigate every case of murder, threats, or assaults against journalists. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Expression described these decisions as dismissing cases a priori before investigating [1]. We note that the special prosecutor’s office for investigating crimes against journalists is still in its early years. Our interview with the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression and analysis of reports about that office indicate that, even with severely limited resources and inadequate staffing levels, the Special Prosecutor has been open to working to build institutional capacity to pursue more perpetrators of crimes against journalists. The overall political will for prosecuting at the federal level remains unclear, in part because for many years, the political culture and legislation has vested such powers at the state level.

Mexico’s complex federal government system is one in which “criminal laws are sporadically enforced at the state level and below,” as political scientist Kathleen Staudt (2014) notes, “with very low levels of public trust in the police and law enforce-ment institutions all over the country . . . Many people are reluctant to report crimes, fearful of the police, corruption, and police complicity with criminals” (p. 170).

Study participants noted a lack of clarity about the coordination between national human rights commissions and those at the state level. A UN Human Rights Council report stated, “Many of the local human rights commissions in the 32 states are weak—with important exceptions, such as the Federal District” (UN General Assembly, 2013a, p. 4). We found early examples of potential for social change by way of legisla-tive and training reforms within the government bureaucracy, including law enforce-ment, and the judiciary. Hundreds of public officials, street-level bureaucrats, law enforcement, and security forces have been trained about journalists’ rights to safety and the issue of impunity. Members of the Mexican judiciary have received training on


these issues, and the program is being rolled out throughout Latin America. It is unclear, however, how long training in municipalities across the country will take and the extent to which training will make a difference with the impunity issue. Our find-ings imply that this is a particular question at the local and state levels, because the offices that handle reports about violence against journalists may also house corrupt government workers who are involved with perpetrators of the crimes. Study partici-pants also noted that “dark networks” in lawless municipalities or jurisdictions with corrupt public workers often inhibit prosecutions for human rights abuses.

Legislation recently adopted in Mexico requires reporting on attacks, killings, inves-tigations, and measures of support for journalist safety. But Mexico goes against UN advice by not tracking prosecutions or convictions. The Mexico case certainly reflects other jurisdictions where the national-level government may acknowledge international human rights norms but without political will or budgetary support for new policies (Staudt, 2014); state and municipal jurisdictional support may also be missing.

The last stage of our model studies whether, and if so how, social change is exhib-ited at the country level by a government’s adherence to policies that emulate global human rights norms (Risse & Sikkink, 1999). We acknowledge that Mexico has a violent history, similar to many countries, and its new initiatives for security and safety of journalists as a human right should be viewed in the context of human rights abuses dating to the early years of the republic. So, while our model suggests that domestic organizations should ultimately become the heart of the push for social change, and we found that study participants hoped to work together more in the future, whether domestic civil society organizations were able to overcome challenges within their networks appeared unlikely at the time of our interviews.

Our research and that of others makes us skeptical about the potential for social change in Mexico related to journalist security, given the human rights abuses that have gone unchecked across the country (Muñoz, 2014; Simmons, 2014). Importantly, Freedom House Mexico’s project director, who has worked on issues related to human rights for decades, noted the absence of human rights in the gov-ernments’ national plan. Nonetheless, the country now has human rights at the very center of the constitution:

The judiciary has changed its position on human rights . . . The Supreme Court has been issuing directives to the country to begin to incorporate international human rights standards into their criteria when judging cases . . . So, little by little human rights is trickling into the justice system. [11]

Our model and this research have a number of limitations. We acknowledge that some organizations, particularly domestic, are not accounted for in this study because of security issues with gathering data, as well as the dispersed nature of organizations working on press security and human rights issues in Mexico. Given the data that we have gathered, complete with interview transcripts and organizational documents, however, we are confident that our case is solid, that this model is useful in journalism and communication, and that it moves social change research forward.


One of the foci of our model is “normative appeals” to governments related to human rights abuses. As noted, some scholarly work and our findings have shown that failed states and local governments may not be “receptive to shame and humiliation” in the “context of unequal north-south relations, historical colonialism, and neocolo-nial relationships” (Staudt, 2014, pp. 168, 166). This requires researchers to explore other potential strategies employed by organizations, such as initiatives to sway public opinion in ways that ultimately could influence government. In addition, the model, when used in a cross-section or limited time frame, can be affected by tumult in admin-istrations, due to elections or other large-scale change that prompts shifts in personnel, policy agendas, experience levels, and politics (Staudt, 2014). Thus, ground that was gained may be lost. To address issues of this type, our model (Figure 2) includes a reverse arrow for social change to demonstrate this potential political, administrative, and societal change regression.

We also found that data are collected differently among agencies, making analysis of change over time tricky. Thus, we recognize that a model tracking social change, specifically one tracking changes in the safety of journalists, must be longitudinal and interact with a range of ministries—foreign affairs, defense, interior—that possess their own agendas. It is essential, then, that researchers note that methods of reporting progress on training, monitoring, prosecuting, and winning convictions could overlap in some cases and be distinctly different in others.

Finally, we acknowledge the United States as the external country apparently investing the most to protect the safety of journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico. However, the amount the United States spent to counter organized crime far surpassed that which was spent on human rights issues. We also note that cooperation agreements have endpoints. Organizational representatives in the study at the domes-tic level in Mexico mentioned this and the constant potential for donor fatigue. This concern applies to Mexico and other countries with these types of interventions (Relly & Zanger, 2016). Furthermore, as Staudt (2014) noted, interests of transnational orga-nizations change, as does their funding; this leaves domestic NGOs to press forward alone with limited resources.

A line of research that would bolster this work would be framing and content analyses studies of news reports from major news outlets in Mexico and the United States about the issue of violence against journalists in Mexico. This would provide additional evidence about the frequency and framing of these reports and would offer longitudinal data that could be studied in lagged models to better understand the influence of “normative appeals” on social change. Studying the role of news media organizations in protecting journalists also would be of value.

Future research should focus on the time period beyond the institutional change phase in the model to build out additional measurements and methods of evaluating social change. Quantitative social network analysis in a study with a more limited scope would allow researchers to study nodes of organizations and the ties/relation-ships that connect them to one another.


Conclusion

This research utilized a new model to examine an emerging supranational organiza-tional plan that addresses the policy issue of violence against journalists around the world. By institutional design, the model provides a framework to study global and domestic networks of organizations that combat affronts to freedom of expression by framing the aggression against journalists, and the subsequent impunity, as a human rights issue. The study found formal and informal organizational networks that do this difficult work in Mexico and globally. We conclude that social change is a much more complicated outcome to assess in the early stages of reform. In Mexico, it is unclear whether domestic civil society organizations eventually will take on a leading role in the fight as other state and supranational activity recedes.

We found that the international community remains involved with security issues within Mexico, domestic civil society’s focus on violence against journalists remains weak, and the Mexican government continues to roll out new policies and training for its institutions. Therefore, future study will be needed to determine whether norms adopted on paper lead to concrete improvements in freedom of expression and journal-ists’ safety—so far, it appears they have not.

Appendix

List of Study Participants and Their Organizations.

Participant Title OrganizationType of

OrganizationInterview

Date

1. Frank La Rue Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

IGO 12/21/2013

2. Dana Ziyasheva

Advisor for Communication and Information

U.N. Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization

IGO 11/15/13

3. Antonio Mazzitelli

Representative U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (Mexico Office)

IGO 11/20/13

4. Rosental Alves

Director Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

INGO 9/13/2013

5. Ricardo Trotti

Director of Press Freedom

Inter American Press Association

INGO 10/8/2013

6. María Idalia Gómez Silva

Representative Inter American Press Association

INGO 6/ 23/13

7. Carlos Lauría Senior Americas Program Coordinator

Committee to Protect Journalists

INGO 10/15/13

8. Balbina Flores

Correspondent Reporters without Borders

INGO 2/25/14

9. Darío Ramírez Salazar

Director of the Press Institute and Press Freedom

Article 19 office for Mexico and Central America

INGO 11/22/13

(continued)




Date

10. Luis Manuel Botello

Senior Director of Special Projects

International Center for Journalists

INGO 12/2/13

11. Jorge Luis Sierra

Global Knight International Journalism Fellow

International Center for Journalists

INGO 6/22/13

12. Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi

Project Director Freedom House Mexico INGO 10/16/13

13. Chantal Pasquarello

Deputy Director Freedom House Mexico INGO 10/16/13

14. Lise Olsen Former Executive Board Member

Investigative Reporters and Editors

NGO 10/3/13

15. Marcela Turati Muñoz

Co-founder Periodistas de a Pié NGO 6/22/13

16. Aimée Vega Montiel

Former director / Academic and Investigations Coordinator

Mexican Association of the Right to Information (AMEDI)

NGO 10/28/13

17. Gustavo Reveles Acosta

Former Executive Board Member

National Association of Hispanic Journalists

NGO 10/29/13

18. Omar Raúl Martínez Sánchez

Former president Fundación Manuel Buendía

NGO 1/30/14

19. Samuel Kenny

Director of Communication

Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights

NGO 2/25/14

20. José Omar Rábago

Director National Center for Social Communication (CENCOS)

NGO 3/5/14

21. Lucia Lagunes Huerta

Director Center for Communication and Information about Women (CIMAC)

NGO 3/7/14

22. Luis Cardona Galindo

Founder Diario 19 NGO 3/25/14

23. Victor Ruiz Arrazola

Attorney Casa de Derechos de Periodistas

NGO 5/9/14

24. Carlos Spector

Attorney, Specialist in Immigration and Asylum Cases

Mexicans in Exile NGO 6/8/14

25. Ricardo Chávez Aldaña

Radio Host Mexicans in Exile NGO 6/8/14

26. Araly Castañón

Co-founder Juárez Journalist Network

NGO 6/9/14

27. Rocío Gallegos

Co-founder Juárez Journalist Network

NGO 6/9/14

Appendix (continued)

(continued)




Date

28. Roberto Delgado

President Juárez Journalist Association

NGO 6/9/14

29. Amalia Rivera de la Cabala

Secretary General Independent Union for Workers

NGO 7/9/14

30. Laura Angelina Borbolla Moreno

Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression

La Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos cometidos en contra de la Libertad de Expresión (FEADLE)

GO 1/27/14

31. Juan Carlos Gutiérrez

Former Head Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists

GO 5/7/14

32. Olga Bashbush

Public Affairs Officer U.S. Department of State

GO 11/14/13

33. USAID — — GO 12/6/13

IGO = intergovernmental organization; INGO = international/transnational nongovernmental organization; NGO = domestic nongovernmental organization; GO = governmental organization; USAID = U.S. Agency for International Development.

Appendix (continued)

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend their gratitude to Dr. Ted Glasser who as a discussant on a research panel at an Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication confer-ence provided important early input on the work. We also thank Dr. Linda Steiner and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable insights and suggestions. We also extend our appre-ciation to Kedi Xia for his assistance with graphics and Jahir Chavez and Litzy Galarza for their assistance with translation and transcription of the audio files.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the University of Arizona Center for Latin American Studies, the University of Arizona Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, the University of Arizona Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, and the University of Arizona Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.

Notes

1. The United Nations (UN) defines human rights defenders as individuals or groups who act to promote human rights and protect these rights (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d.).


2. This slipping back to an environment in which human rights abuses against journalists are ignored is demonstrated by the reverse direction of arrows at the bottom of the “State” sec-tion of the model.

3. Our citations for the findings utilize a number for each participant, which is listed in the appendix with the name of the study participant, the organization name and type, the par-ticipant’s title, and the date of the interview.

4. Study participants are referred to by the number associated with their names in the Monograph.

5. The UN defines human rights defenders as individuals or groups who act to promote human rights and protect these rights.

6. The meeting was organized by a number of UN organizations (UNESCO, the UN Development Program, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime; UNESCO, 2012, p. 7).

7. The intergovernmental organizations were UNESCO, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Development Program, and the Council of Europe.

8. Article 19 is a U.K.-based human rights organization focusing on the worldwide defense and promotion of freedoms of expression and of information. The name refers to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions with-out interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

9. The report indicates that “little progress” has been made toward prosecuting soldiers, police, and others in the government for these abuses that have escalated since former president Calderón (2006-2012) launched the war on organized crime (para. 1).

10. As Figure 8 notes, the National Commission for Human Rights has a slightly lower estimate.

11. In 2013, the National Commission on Human Rights reported that 89% of the cases of attacks on journalists occurred with impunity. More recently, the same commission placed the level of impunity of cases of murdered journalists at 82%. However, the 2016 report criticized how the special prosecutor’s office reports data on the status of investigations into crimes against journalists, making it extremely difficult to discern exact levels of impunity. According to the Commission, “The published reports had more aims related to dissemination and image than an effective release of figures” (National Commission of Human Rights, 2016, pp. 48, 52).

12. The countries and other jurisdictions participating in the Massive Online Course are Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela (UNESCO, 2016a, p. 3).

13. In 2011, the United States stopped contributing to UNESCO after the Palestinians were admitted to the organization as members; two years later, the United States lost its vote at

UNESCO’s General Assembly (Rubin, 2013, paras. 1-2).

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Author Biographies

Jeannine E. Relly is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona with a courtesy appointment with the School of Government and Public Policy. She is an affiliated faculty member with the university’s Center for Latin American Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and Center for Border and Global Journalism. She received a fellowship with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy to conduct research for this study. She and collaborators have done research in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Mexico, and the United States. Her recent projects focus on collective action and the influence of foreign interventions or global or domestic networks on journalists, civil society organizations, and social activists with initiatives to advance social change. In 2016-2017, she did research in India as a Fulbright Scholar focused on domestic networks and information rights. Before entering academia, she worked as a journalist in regions including the Caribbean and the Mexico–U.S. borderlands.

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http://niemanreports.org/articles/killing-journalists-with-impunity/


Celeste González de Bustamante is associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona and an affiliated faculty member of the UA Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Border and Global Journalism. She was a distinguished visiting profes-sor at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City in 2013-2014. She is the author of “Muy buenas noches”: Mexico, Television and the Cold War (2012), and coedited Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics (2012), an anthology about immigration, media, and globalization. She is now the cohead of the Border Journalism Network/La red de periodistas de la frontera. Before entering the academy, she reported for commercial and public television, covering politics and the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.