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Killings of journalists lead to news blackouts in Mexico
Press advocates and newspaper editors say a campaign by criminal syndicates to kill journalists is drawing a dark curtain across swaths of Mexico.
"We aren't reporting on matters of drug trafficking," Patricia Mercado, the editor of the Imagen newspaper in Zacatecas, acknowledged bluntly at a forum Thursday that brought together editors from across Mexico. "We've been warned that we cannot touch the issue."
The issue of soaring threats against Mexican journalists came to the fore this week after an anguished front-page plea to drug cartels from a border newspaper and the unprecedented granting of U.S. asylum to a Mexican journalist.
"This is a national crisis," said Carlos Lauria, senior coordinator for the Americas for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group. "It affects the fundamental rights of Mexicans to be informed."