Covering Mexico and ‘the war next door’
Are American news outlets paying any attention to ‘the war next door’?
Greta van Susteren, host of On the Record wondered publicly on Twitter earlier this week. She linked to her page and a BBC report on the matter on Gretawire.
A Google search shows that while American news outlets are reporting the news on Mexico, the website for the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) has actual charts showing that media coverage, by a ratio of 2:1 even, give the immigration debate much more media attention overall than the Mexican drug war.
The Los Angeles Times states that their own reporters and photographers have chronicled the the combat among Mexican drug cartels for control over the lucrative drug trade to the U.S. since 2008.
But at least one organization, Portland Central America Solidarity, states through their website that much of the Mexican News Media are engaged in outright distorting and sanitizing of stories in acts of self-censorship to their audience at home and abroad.
Citing the Media’s “Mexico Initiative” PR Campaign which began in 2010 just prior to the nation’s Bicentennial and the newest accord from 2011, Iniciativa Mexico, PCAS holds that the media alliance has morphed from an intentional playing down of the war’s atrocities into an actual suppression of the reality.
The Los Angeles Times, however, sees the initiative of 2011 as one that provides needed guidelines for media to protect their employees and deny cartels any glory for the horrific killings. In areas where actual drug gangs roam and terrorize, the guidelines may not be useful information to residents already in fear over local shootouts. The more useful means of warning a community about local terror appears to be social networking announcements, although NPR reports cartels also want to control Internet postings.
For graphic used on the story, see PEJ Chart.
