Humberto Padgett used to be reporting at the results of drought in Cuitzeo, a rural house of central Mexico, when his automobile used to be intercepted by way of armed males on September 13 2024. They threatened him and stole the automobile, his identification papers and paintings apparatus, together with two bullet-proof jackets.
Padgett, a Mexican investigative journalist and creator, used to be reporting on Mexico’s rising environmental worries for nationwide communicate radio station Radio Fórmula. It proved to be his closing task for the station. Two days later, he tweeted:
Lately I’m leaving journalism indefinitely. The losses I’ve suffered, the harassment and threats my circle of relatives and I’ve persisted, and the forget I’ve confronted have compelled me to surrender after 26 years of labor. Thanks and just right success.
Padgett made this resolution in spite of the reality he, like many different newshounds in Mexico, has been enrolled in a central authority defense scheme for years – the Coverage Mechanism for Newshounds and Human Rights Defenders, arrange in 2012. A number of different Latin American international locations have equivalent defense programmes, together with Honduras since 2015.
Those programmes be offering newshounds measures similar to panic buttons and emergency telephone signals, police or personal safety patrols, and safety cameras and alarm techniques for his or her houses and places of work. Some are supplied with bodyguards – now and then, Padgett has won 24-hour defense.
But even as soon as newshounds are enrolled in those govt defense schemes, the assaults and threats proceed. Shockingly, many come from state workers who, in each Mexico and Honduras, are considered accountable for just about part of all assaults on newshounds. However the prospect of punishment is far off: a minimum of 90% of assaults on newshounds pass unprosecuted and unpunished, which means there’s little deterrent for committing those crimes.
Each Mexico and Honduras these days have leftwing governments that have promised to give protection to newshounds, following a protracted historical past of crimes towards media pros in each international locations. But the danger to newshounds posed by way of the state has worsened lately amid expanding use of spyware and adware, on-line smear campaigns, and emerging ranges of anti-media rhetoric.
A mourner holds a photograph of murdered journalist Fredid Roman throughout his funeral within the Mexican state of Guerrero, August 2022.
David Guzman Gonzalez/EPA-EFE
Many newshounds there have advanced methods for self-protection, together with putting in NGOs that beef up colleagues in danger. However whilst they’re doing journalism in ways in which make reporting more secure, their paintings has been additional threatened by way of the abrupt suspension of USAID and different US grants, which is heightening the risks confronted by way of newshounds in Latin The usa and all over the world.
Threats from the state
After I inform other folks about my analysis into how newshounds in Latin The usa care for the relentless violence and impunity, their first query is most often: “Oh, you mean drug cartels?” And certainly, each Padgett and Funes have won loss of life threats for his or her investigations into cartels and different organised crime teams.
Padgett used to be as soon as despatched an unsolicited photograph of a dismembered frame in a morgue. He used to be crushed and kicked within the head by way of armed males who threatened to kill him and his circle of relatives whilst he used to be reporting on drug dealing on a school campus in Mexico Town in 2017. He wears a bullet-proof jacket – or did till it used to be stolen – and helps to keep his house cope with a carefully guarded secret.
However cartels and gangs are simplest a part of the tale in terms of anti-press violence and impunity in those international locations. In some ways, the larger tale is the danger from the state. This has been a relentless in spite of adjustments in govt, whether or not proper or left wing.
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My analysis mission and ensuing guide have been impressed by way of my paintings offering advocacy, sensible and ethical beef up for newshounds in danger in Latin The usa for a world NGO between 2007 and 2016. The level of the danger posed by way of state brokers – performing on my own or in cahoots with organised crime teams – is obvious from the various newshounds I’ve spoken to in each Mexico and Honduras.
I first interviewed those journalists, and the organisations that lend a hand them, in 2018, however in 2022-23 (89 interviews in general), to chart how newshounds fight for defense and justice from the state within the face of rising demanding situations at each home and global degree.
For each Padgett and Funes, the intimidation, threats and assaults from organised crime teams regularly adopted them reporting on state brokers and their alleged hyperlinks with such teams. Organised crime teams have deeply infiltrated the material of society in lots of portions of Mexico and Honduras – together with politics, state establishments, justice and legislation enforcement, in particular at an area degree.
In Padgett’s case, the suspected cartel threats got here after he revealed a guide and investigation into hyperlinks between state governments and drug cartels, together with drug cash for political campaigns in Tamaulipas and a surge in cartel-related violence in Morelos below a undeniable native management.
Padgett had first joined the federal defense mechanism after he used to be attacked by way of police when filming a raid in central Mexico Town in 2016. The police confiscated his telephone and arrested him.
He used to be later assigned an around-the-clock bodyguard after the Mexico Town prosecutor’s place of job made to be had his touch main points and his possibility evaluate and defense plan – produced by way of the state programme that used to be meant to safeguard him – for inclusion within the courtroom document at the 2017 assault on him on the college. This supposed the criminals at the back of the assault had complete get admission to to this data.
Mexican investigative journalist Humberto Padgett, on the release of his guide Guerrero in January 2016.
Jose Mendez/EPA
Being a part of this defense programme didn’t prevent the threats by way of state workers. In April 2024, whilst seeking to document from the scene of the homicide of an area mayoral candidate in Guanajuato state, Padgett used to be punched within the face by way of a police officer from the state prosecutor’s place of job, who additionally smashed his glasses and deleted his footage.
Years previous, he were subjected to a chronic prison struggle by way of former Mexico state governor and presidential candidate Eruviel Ávila Villegas, who sued Padgett for “moral damages” to the song of greater than part 1,000,000 US bucks. His offence? A 2017 profile which discussed that the flesh presser had attended events the place a bishop had sexually abused male minors.
Padgett in the end received the case – however simplest on attraction, thank you to a professional bono prison group, after 18 months of rigidity and travelling to wait the hearings. This is part of a rising development of “strategic lawsuits against public participation” (Slapps) in Mexico and Latin The usa, geared toward silencing newshounds and different important voices.
As Padgett put it: “[Even] once we manage to win, there are no consequences for the politicians who call us to a trial without merit – no consequences at all. Eruviel Ávila is still a senator for the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party]” – and he used to be now not even answerable for prices.
Mexico’s federal govt and military have additionally performed unlawful surveillance of the cell phones of newshounds and human rights defenders investigating federal govt corruption and severe human rights violations on a couple of events, together with by way of the usage of Pegasus spyware and adware.
In Honduras, Funes isn’t any stranger to state harassment both. In 2011, she used to be amongst round 100 newshounds, lots of them ladies, who have been teargassed and crushed with truncheons by way of officials of the presidential guard and the nationwide police throughout a relaxed protest towards journalist murders.
In recent times, in line with Funes, she and her group at RI were focused by way of cyberattacks and orchestrated smear campaigns on social media that experience sought to tar them as being corrupt or related to felony gangs. She suspects the military is at the back of a few of these assaults since RI has written in favour of demilitarising the police. A number of RI group individuals were stopped at military checkpoints; when they have got denounced this on TikTok or Fb, they have got been flooded by way of unfavorable feedback.
Profile of investigative journalist Wendy Funes, winner of the 2018 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression journalism award.
RI has additionally been attacked by way of govt supporters unsatisfied with its important protection of the Honduras president Xiomara Castro’s leftwing management. In August 2024, Funes used to be threatened with prosecution by way of the governor of Choluteca, southern Honduras, over RI’s investigation into alleged involvement by way of native govt officers in migrant trafficking. And previous in 2025, Funes and a human rights activist have been subjected to misogynistic and sexist diatribes and threats by way of the top of customs for a similar regional division, for difficult justice for a murdered environmental defender.
Nearly part of all assaults on newshounds in Mexico and Honduras are because of state brokers, in particular on the native degree. In Mexico, the NGO Article 19 has attributed 46% of all such attacks over the past decade to state brokers together with officers, civil servants and the defense force.
In Honduras, in line with the Committee for Unfastened Expression (C-Libre), 45% of assaults on newshounds within the first quarter of 2024 have been attributed to state brokers, up from 41% in 2021. Those come with the nationwide police, the Army Public Order Police, officers and individuals of the federal government.
Impunity is a truth of existence
One key reason why for the failure of the journalist defense schemes in Mexico and Honduras is that they lack the ability to analyze, prosecute and punish the ones chargeable for the assaults that brought about the newshounds to go into the programmes within the first position.
Padgett is but to peer justice, both for the assault on him by way of drug sellers on the college campus nearly 8 years in the past or the result of the legit investigation into the Mexico Town prosecutor place of job’s obvious leaking of his touch main points to the assailants. When he requested the prosecutor’s place of job for an replace on its investigation in June 2024, he used to be instructed it were closed two years previous. His request for a duplicate of the document used to be denied.
When he went to the place of job to invite why, he used to be detained by way of cops. “This is justice in Mexico City,” he mentioned in a video he filmed throughout his arrest, including:
Drug dealing is authorized. My private information is leaked to the organised crime [group] that threatened to kill me and my circle of relatives. Then the topic is shelved. I come to invite for my document and as a substitute of giving it to me, they take me to courtroom. That’s the fact as of late.
Information document by way of Al Jazeera English (February 2023)
Padgett lodged a criticism and, following “a tortuous judicial process”, in the end controlled to get the investigation re-opened. However he says he has misplaced hope within the procedure and the justice device typically. Even one thing so simple as submitting a document at the robbery of his bullet-proof jacket throughout the armed assault in September 2024 has proved past the legit chargeable for the duty, so the safety programme has now not changed it.
Funes says she reported one of the most cyber-attacks on RI to the particular prosecutor established by way of Honduras in 2018 to analyze crimes towards newshounds and human rights defenders. Funes equipped the title and cell phone quantity utilized by the hacker. On the other hand, she mentioned the case used to be later closed for “lack of merit”.
Up to now, the legit investigation into the 2011 assault on her and different ladies newshounds had additionally been quietly shelved after the proof used to be “lost”. Funes says this put her off reporting next incidents to the government:
What for? I simply need them to give protection to me … why waste my time? Actually, you get used to impunity, you normalise it.
There were a couple of essential advances in Mexico lately, together with the a hit prosecution of a few of the ones at the back of the 2017 homicide of 2 high-profile newshounds, Javier Valdez and Miroslava Breach, however such circumstances stay the exception. Round 90% of assaults on newshounds nonetheless pass unprosecuted and unpunished by way of the state in each Mexico and Honduras, which means there’s little deterrent towards those crimes.
A tribute to Javier Valdez, one among two newshounds murdered in Mexico’s Sinaloa state in Might 2017.
Chico Sanchez/StockimoNews/Alamy
More secure, higher tactics of running
Lots of the newshounds I’ve interviewed prioritise overlaying under-reported problems on the subject of human rights and democracy, corruption, violence and impunity. They use in-depth, investigative journalism to check out to show the reality about what is occurring of their international locations – which is regularly obscured by way of the issues and corruption of the justice device and rule of legislation.
Many are growing more secure, higher tactics of running, with 3 methods having grown noticeably lately: construction collaborations, in search of global beef up, and professionalising their tactics of running.
Newshounds from other media shops regularly triumph over skilled rivalries to collaborate on delicate and threatening tales. In Mexico, individuals of a few newshounds’ collectives and networks alert each and every different of safety dangers at the flooring, percentage and corroborate knowledge, and track their individuals throughout dangerous assignments. Others go back and forth as a gaggle – when investigating the mass graves utilized by drug cartels, for instance.
In Mexico and more and more in Honduras, they post arguable tales, similar to on severe human rights violations involving the state, in multiple outlet concurrently to cut back the risk of particular person newshounds being focused in reprisal. Such collaborations construct accept as true with, cohesion and mutual beef up amongst journalists and editors – one thing that has historically been missing in each international locations.
Increasingly more, global media companions additionally play crucial function in regards to the protection of Mexican and Honduran newshounds and amplifying public consciousness of the problems they document on – encouraging the mainstream media in their very own international locations to take realize and extending power on their governments to behave.
In keeping with Jennifer Ávila, director of the Honduran investigative journalism platform ContraCorriente, transnational collaborations are a “super-important protection mechanism” as a result of they provide newshounds get admission to to exterior editors and prison help – in addition to assist leaving the rustic if essential.
World companions additionally convey greater sources. In Mexico and Honduras, as in different Latin American international locations, the primary supply of investment is govt promoting and different state monetary incentives. However those include expectancies about affect over editorial insurance policies and content material, so aren’t an choice for many unbiased shops. Personal promoting could also be difficult for those and different causes. So, maximum unbiased media shops and journalistic initiatives are closely depending on US and Ecu donors such because the Nationwide Endowment for Democracy (Ned), Ford Basis and Open Society Foundations.
A lot of Latin The usa has excessive ranges of media focus, with the mainstream media most often being owned by way of a handful of rich folks or households with wider trade pursuits – and shut financial and political hyperlinks to politicians and the state. Blended with the strings of presidency promoting, this regularly leads to “soft” censorship of the content material that those shops post. Some newshounds are escaping this both by way of putting in their very own media virtual shops, like Funes, or by way of going freelance – as Padgett has determined to do following the assault on him in Cuitzeo in 2024.
On the identical time, there was a fashionable elevating of requirements via greater coaching in tactics similar to journalistic ethics, making freedom of data requests, virtual and investigative journalism, and overlaying elections. This all is helping to advertise “journalistic security” – the usage of knowledge as a “shield in such a way that no one can deny what you’re saying”, in line with Daniela Pastrana of the NGO Newshounds at the Floor (PdP). It additionally is helping counter the belief – and in some circumstances, fact – of longstanding corruption in portions of the occupation.
Adverse setting places growth in danger
In spite of the promise of remodeling journalism via expanding collaboration, professionalisation and global beef up, the present outlook for newshounds in Mexico and Honduras – and different international locations in Latin The usa – isn’t encouraging. Adverse govt rhetoric towards unbiased journalists and media shops is on the upward thrust, in spite of the presidents of each Mexico and Honduras having pledged to give protection to newshounds and freedom of expression.
In Honduras, the antagonistic rhetoric in opposition to newshounds is rising within the run-up to the presidential elections in November. In keeping with Funes: “There is a violent public discourse from the government which is repeated by officials [and] prepares the ground for worse attacks on the press … This is dangerous.”
In each international locations, such attitudes on the best are regularly replicated by way of native politicians and electorate, together with on-line, with the specter of violent discourse resulting in bodily violence. This hostility seems prone to develop given the instance of Donald Trump’s competitive and litigious angle in opposition to newshounds and the media in the US.
Certainly, the insurance policies of the second one Trump management are already jeopardising growth made relating to reworking journalism in Mexico and Honduras. In past due January 2025, america govt suspended global support and shuttered USAID, amid unsubstantiated accusations of fraud and corruption.
In keeping with the clicking freedom team Newshounds With out Borders, the USAID freeze integrated greater than US$268m (£216m) that were allotted to beef up “independent media and the free flow of information” in 2025.
Ned’s chair, Peter Roskam, explains its prison motion towards the Trump investment cuts.
Uncertainty about long term investment has ended in the quick suspension of operations and layoffs by way of many nonprofit media organisations in Mexico, Honduras and around the area. Whilst this seismic shift within the Latin American media panorama reinforces the pressing want to diversify its assets of investment, there’s no doubt that within the quick or even medium time period, it has dealt a significant blow to the improvement of unfastened and unbiased journalism and the protection of all newshounds.
In a area of more and more authoritarian leaders, it’s now so much tougher to carry them answerable for corruption, human rights violations, impunity and different abuses.
World impotence
Anti-press violence and impunity are world issues, with greater than 1,700 newshounds killed international between 2006 and 2024 – round 85% of which went unpunished, in line with Unesco.
Even if global organisations, defense mechanisms and power will also be essential equipment within the struggle towards anti-press violence and impunity, they’re in the end restricted in have an effect on because of their reliance at the state to conform. Some newshounds in Mexico and Honduras counsel the have an effect on of such global consideration will even be counter-productive, because of their governments’ expanding hostility towards any complaint by way of global organisations, newshounds and different perceived fighters.
Two decades in the past, Lydia Cacho, a famend journalist and girls’s rights activist, used to be arbitrarily detained and tortured in Puebla state, east-central Mexico, after publishing a guide exposing a corruption and kid sexual exploitation community involving government and well known businessmen. Not able to get redress for her torture during the Mexican justice device, Cacho in the end took her case to the United International locations.
After all, in 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee dominated that her rights were violated and ordered the Mexican state to re-open the investigation into the assault, and to present her ok reimbursement. This judgment has ended in a number of arrests of state brokers in Puebla, together with a former governor and leader of the judicial police and a number of other cops, in addition to a public apology from the government.
Journalist Lydia Cacho talking on the 2020 Camden Convention.
However circumstances like Cacho’s are the exception. Securing rulings from global our bodies calls for sources and effort, the assistance of NGOs or attorneys – and will take years. What’s extra, enforcement of global selections depends upon the state to conform.
Whilst global power used to be key to persuading the Mexican and Honduran states to arrange their govt defense schemes for newshounds and specialized prosecutors to analyze assaults towards them, those establishments have in most cases proved useless.
Resourcing is all the time a subject matter: most often, defense mechanisms and prosecutors’ places of work are underfunded and the workforce are poorly educated. Some our bodies have restricted mandates, similar to defense mechanisms that lack the ability to analyze assaults on newshounds. Every so often, those failings are believed to be planned. In keeping with Padgett, the Mexican journalist defense scheme has “political biases against those whom officials consider to be hostile to the regime”.
Certainly, many newshounds and beef up teams suspect the Mexican and Honduran governments don’t in reality need those establishments to paintings. Because the pro-democracy pass judgement on Guillermo López Lone commented concerning the repeated failure to protected convictions for crimes towards newshounds and human rights defenders in Honduras: “These are international commitments [made] due to pressure, but there is no political will.”
López Lone, who used to be illegally got rid of from his place after the 2009 coup in Honduras and simplest reinstated as a pass judgement on after a years-long fight, together with a ruling by way of the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights, alleged that those establishments “play a merely formal role” in Honduras, as a result of they have got been “captured by the political interests of the current rulers, and by criminal networks”.
In a similar way, in line with Sara Mendiola, director of Mexico Town-based NGO Propuesta Cívica, it’s now not sufficient to speak about a loss of sources or coaching: “Even if you doubled the [state] prosecutors’ offices’ budgets, you’d still have the same impunity because the structures [that generate impunity] remain.”
Activism is a dangerous trade
It’s transparent that during each Mexico and Honduras, in spite of the governments’ said dedication to freedom of expression, there’s a deep-seated ambivalence about how essential or fascinating it’s to give protection to newshounds and media freedom.
The guts of this factor is the contradiction of the state as each protector and culprit – a state that doesn’t wish to, or is incapable of, constraining or investigating itself and its allies. This in flip is related to longstanding structural issues of corruption, impunity and human rights violations, and a legacy of controlling the media courting to pre-democracy days.
Activism by way of newshounds towards this example – every other type of self-protection – takes quite a lot of paperwork, together with public protests and advocacy, and dealing for and putting in NGOs that beef up colleagues in danger. Increasingly more, activism additionally comes to the approaching in combination of those that are the sufferers of violence.
Newshounds within the Mexican town of Acapulco call for extra defense within the face of greater threats by way of organised crime teams, October 2020.
David Guzman Gonzalez/EPA-EFE
In Mexico Town, teams of newshounds displaced from their houses by way of threats and assaults, lots of whom finally end up with out a process or source of revenue, have shaped collectives and networks to offer mutual beef up and lend a hand colleagues in equivalent cases. In Veracruz state, the Community in Reminiscence of and Battle for Killed and Disappeared Newshounds used to be shaped by way of the kinfolk of the various such newshounds in 2022.
However activism is a dangerous trade in Mexico and Honduras, opening newshounds and their family members as much as additional repression and assaults by way of the state – and on occasion elevating questions on their impartiality and credibility. Whilst many newshounds have taken section in activism out of necessity or desperation, in each international locations their major supply of optimism within the face of violence and impunity is journalism itself.
Journalism as the answer
Thankfully, newshounds like Padgett don’t surrender simply. After an eight-month hiatus following the assault in Cuitzeo and its aftermath, he now feels in a position to return to reporting.
Even if he succeeded in getting the shelved investigation into the 2017 assault on him and next information leak reopened, the loss of any motion since way he’s determined to attract a line below this labyrinthine procedure. He’s now in search of “alternative means of justice to compensate for the impunity”.
As part of the reparations, he has been promised a proper apology from the Mexico Town Prosecutor’s Place of work (very similar to the apology won by way of Cacho). This type of rite isn’t justice and would possibly in large part be symbolic, however Padgett feels it is going to permit him to transport on and concentrate on journalism once more – this time as a freelancer. He’s willing to make the purpose that Mexico stays “an extraordinary place to be a reporter”.
In spite of the loss of state defense and the entire different demanding situations, newshounds like Padgett and Funes are made up our minds to stay going – investigating their international locations’ ills, probing the foundation reasons, reworking their occupation. Their dedication gives a ray of hope for the emergence of a in reality unfastened and unbiased media in Mexico, Honduras and past.
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