Guatemalan journalists in jeopardy, lack support from authorities and media owners

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The dangers for journalists in Latin America continue, and the latest report is about Guatemala.

Reporters, media directors and human rights defenders say the greatest risk for journalists is exposure to violence combined with a lack of protection and a lack of commitment to investigate crimes against them, Inter Press Service and Cerigua report.

‘It is definitely dangerous to work as a journalist in Guatemala,’ radio reporter María Teresa López tells Inter Press Service. Journalists outside the capital are especially vulnerable, she says, because ‘everyone knows us and knows what we’re doing.’

The blog of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reports that ‘the prosecutor’s office for crimes against journalists took legal action on only one of the 36 complaints it received in 2008. But Walter Juárez of the Guatemalan Journalists Assn. says media owners share the responsibility. They ‘make the reporters stick their necks out by forcing them to sign their stories, while failing to do anything’ to protect them, he says.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City