Unavenged Assault on the Press

Twelve journalists have been killed in the past five months in this hemisphere, five of them in Colombia alone, and more have been attacked, threatened or harassed. None of the murders and attempted murders have been officially solved and not one perpetrator has been brought to justice. The ugly list includes four dead in Brazil, two in Mexico and one in Guatemala.

True, no one can say for sure whether these killings are a direct result of journalistic activities. And there have been no charges of complicity by any government officials. But it is also true that the assassination of a journalist always has a chilling effect on freedom of the press. We may not know the names of the killers or their reasons, but we do know that drug traffickers, corrupt politicians and unscrupulous businessmen do not like meddling journalists.

Some cases are clear-cut. The attempted assassination of Mexican journalist Jesus Blanco Ornelas last November in Tijuana was unmistakably the work of drug traffickers. But the case remains unsolved and none of the assailants have been arrested.

A free press is a chief guarantor of a free society. Reporters in Colombia and elsewhere have been sometimes crazily brave in investigating the drugs and corruption that threaten their societies. But if they continue to be murdered without consequence to the killers, at some point no one will take their places.