“For me personally, it’s been a nightmare, because I don’t see any way out now. The men who got inside my house put their guns to my neighbors’ heads—that’s including one six-year-old girl.” This is Mexican investigative journalists Anabel Hernandez’s response when asked about her safety and a recent home invasion directed toward her courtesy of the drug cartels.(Alexandrov) This is what it is like to lead a career as a journalist reporting on drug cartels in many latin American countries. The cartels influence on local and federal government in Mexico gives them the freedom to threaten and actively pursue journalists as targets with no retributions for their actions. This is leaving journalists like Hernandez defenseless and in danger, in the last ten years alone more than 80 journalists have been killed and nothing is being done about it.(Alexandrov)
The impunity given to cartels for the acts of violence and intimidation carried out on journalists has taken a toll on the media’s integrity and has made their job one of the most dangerous and undesirable jobs in Mexico. Not only are the cartels
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We have a president that bashes the media from all sides claiming most every report that is not in his favor as “fake news”. We have all heard him say it, on social media or on television or other sources. The problem with this is, even though it may seem harmless, this undermines the media's credibility due to the millions of people that are influenced by his words and actions. Creating a relationship of mistrust between the people of America and the media as well as casting them as an “enemy” to the public is detrimental to the media sources; furthermore it has the same consequences as the weakened media in Mexico. Media’s role is to provide unbiased reports to the public and should neither work with or against the
It is no secret that drugs are prevalent in every nation in the world. However, how do these illegal drugs move throughout the world? Drug traffickers have gotten very creative in the methods they use to transport drugs across state line and country’s borders. Major drug cartels of Mexico recruit children with the promises of fast easy money and little risk of detection by police. They use children for several reasons; they are less suspicious, can travel on planes without adults, they create a “family” look so no attention is drawn to a group. What the children do not know is they are expendable to the cartel, and if the transport does not go according to plan, their lives are on the line.
The hallmark of American democracy is the nation’s vigilant press. However, intense rhetoric against Journalists saw an increase during the recent
It is no secret that Mexico has become a dangerous place in the recent years. However, for many of us Mexican-Americans, it is still our beloved homeland. Whether or not we are forced to go by our elders, many of us visit yearly. Am I afraid for my life? Yes. Would I put my precious life on the line once more? Probably. The secret to not becoming the headline story in Mexico’s national newspaper is blending in.
Outside of the political spectrum, there is another group of organizations that have perhaps and even stronger grasp on the media than media regulators themselves. The incredibly complex and well organized drug cartels that base themselves mostly in northern Mexico and along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico are in many ways the most influential organizations in the nation’s media. As mentioned earlier, Mexican citizens were granted freedom of the press in the 1857 Federal Constitution giving them expressional rights that closely resembled the United States’ on paper. However, as the cartels ran rampant throughout the country some indirect restrictions were put on these rights. The cartels employ ruthless violence and torture in order to punish those who oppose them, including journalists and reporters who attempt to portray them in a negative light. Over the past decade “there have been ‘172 attacks on press freedom, including nine journalists and two media workers killed’” (Hernandez-Garcia 2012). As a result, anyone reporting on the drug wars is essentially risking his or her own life; a risk the majority of reporters are not willing to take. The fear of being found and captured by the cartel is enough to cause a chilling effect among reporters and even stop some news outlets from reporting on the cartel’s actions at all. That’s not to say that news of the cartels’ actions doesn’t get released to the public. Lepe summarized the media portrayals of the cartel as such:
Here lies a stale lifeless body after a drug cartel raids a small town, just south of the Texas border. In December of 2006 and still ongoing, the Mexican Drug War has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of individuals. Mexico believes that in order to put an end to the Drug Wars, America needs to control its need for drugs. The first call to action involves new policies and restrictions on the exports and imports of drugs in between the United States and Mexico.
The systematic scheduling of drugs in the United States is arbitrary which leads to a discriminative social injustice. Some psychedelic substances such as Psilocybin are schedule 1 drugs, while alcohol and nicotine are legal. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) both alcohol and nicotine are proven to be harmful and addictive (2017). Conversely, Psychedelic substances have not been proven to be addictive. This equates to a social injustice that discriminates over someone who may prefer the effects of psilocybin to nicotine, even under the science that has shown nicotine and alcohol have a higher potential for abuse. Unfortunately, many political factors come into play regarding the legal status of drugs and industries such as the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol industries, who harbor the most money and have an influence in the legality of drugs whether they are safe or not. While legalizing psychedelic substances would most likely cut into profits for these large industries they would bring about economic benefits as well.
“We all have an interest in making sure teens grow up healthy and drug free.” – John Walters
“In the Mexico we want; there is no room for corruption, for cover-ups, and least of all for impunity.” On December 1 2012, in the country of Mexico, a new president entered the office. Upon being inaugurated, Enrique Peña Nieto vowed to increase welfare in Mexico as well as terminate drug cartels throughout the country. Although well-known for divulging scandalous confessions, the current president of Mexico has had both positive and negative influences on the citizens of the Spanish-speaking country, from his meritorious effort at capturing notorious drug dealer “El Chapo”, to the unmitigated crowds protesting his negligence when 43 students go missing.
Today in our modern society, many people believe that teen’s develop a mindset of having a clean system and to stay drug free. However, people are not able to foresee that the drug use in America has rising up tremendously. Studies have shown that drugs can not only have impact on your life, but also have impact on those who surround you and also can led to the absence of adolescence. It leads to bad habits and only brings evil deeds. The possession of drugs and the conspiracy sell is illegal in the Unites States. If arrest and put on trial due to drugs can mean serious jail time. According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, people are considered to have a substance use disorder. (Live Science) The Live Science states “... people have strong urges to use a substance or can't control their use of it, or if their use impairs them in social situations or leads to risky behavior.” Members of society have needs when a drug is being in place into there normal day routine. The report also states that an estimated 27.1 million people in the U.S. used an illegal drug in the past month. (Live Science) The mass-production, sale and possession of illegal drugs should be banned in the United States.
Therefore, crafting a situated conceptualization of Latin American investigative journalism(s) should pay attention not only to methods and procedures, but also to outcomes. That is, the actual exposés that come all the way through the light not only because they straightforward follow strong and systematic steps, but overall because they overcome several practical obstacles and political economic conditions that overshadow eventual methodological shortcomings or unorthodox procedures and are crucial at certain critical moments in their societies.
The war on drugs has been a failure. The war on drugs has failed because the government spends millions of dollars on trying to stop people from using drugs but the government has not stopped them from using them. The government has spent 1 trillion since Nixon declared war on drugs and 51 billion dollars each year from incarcerating people. A total of 2.3 million people are in prison for drug related crimes. This is more than anywhere else in the planet. Drug use and overdoses are still the same. Many people say that if drugs were to be legalized, drug use would increase dramatically. This was not the case in Portugal. Portugal decided to decriminalize all drugs in 2001. Many people feared that this would collapse the country, but in fact the opposite happened. Prisons were not overrun anymore. It is safer for the government to decriminalize all drugs because this way all the drugs are not in the hands of the drug dealers, they are in the hands of the government. This is safer and better because now the government knows who is buying the drugs and how much that individual is using. The consumer also knows what he or she is consuming. This is not the case with the drug dealers where an individual does not know what he or she is getting. Many people say it is not fair for people to go to jail for nonviolent crimes such as
“We’re going to build a wall, it will go up so fast your heads will spin”. This miraculous claim was made by President Donald Trump at a rally during his campaign. Many people were baffled by this. During his campaign President Trump made many other claims besides this one to find a way to “Make America great again” as he has said in many speeches. “When Mexico is sending its best people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing in drugs, They're bringing crime, They’re rapist”. This is from one of Trump’s rally speeches which shows what happens when you let illegals come into our country and run free.
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." This quote by A.J. Liebling illustrates the reality of where the media stands in today's society. Over the past twenty years there has been an increase in power throughout the media with regard to politics. The media's original purpose was to inform the public of the relevant events that occurred around the world. The job of the media is to search out the truth and relay that news to the people. The media has the power to inform the people but often times the stories given to the public are distorted for one reason or another. Using slant and sensationalism, the media has begun to shape our views in society and the process by which
To sum up, the freedom of expression and press is under attack in Mexico and because of the lack of coverage of many important events in the country still a high number of people couldn’t access proper and unbiased
Drugs are a major influential force in our country today. The problem has gotten so out of hand that many people are even considering legalization of one of the most used drugs, marijuana. The legalization of marijuana is a controversial issue that has been fought for and against for several decades. Marijuana is defined as a preparation made from the dried flower clusters and leaves of the cannabis plant, which is usually smoked or eaten to induce euphoria and to heal and soothe. (dictionalr.com)