WUNRN
Mexico - Women Journalists Face Dangers/Risks
By Daniela Pastrana
|
MEXICO
CITY, Jul 26, 2011 (IPS) - The murder of journalist Yolanda Ordaz, whose body
was found Tuesday in the eastern Mexican city of Veracruz, once again threw
into relief the dangers that reporters face in this country, which in the case
of women are compounded by discriminatory and sexist treatment.
Ordaz, a reporter
with Notiver, the leading newspaper in that region, went missing Sunday. Her
corpse was found, with the throat cut, behind the offices of another newspaper.
Her death brings to 14 the number of journalists killed in
When she
began to investigate the Jun. 20 murder of Notiver's assistant director Miguel
Ángel López, Ordaz received threats telling her she "would be next"
if she did not drop the case. López was shot in his home along with his wife
and son.
Earlier this
month, rights watchdog Amnesty International sent out an urgent action appeal
urging people to pressure the Mexican government to protect journalist and
human rights defender Lydia Cacho after she received new death threats.
In her 2005
book "Los demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho documented
complicity between child sex rings and political and business elites in her
hometown, the popular beach resort of Cancún.
Women
journalists have increasingly become targets of death threats in
The most
serious case until Ordaz's murder was that of María Esther Aguilar, who went
missing on Nov. 11, 2009 after reporting on brutality and abuse of power by the
police chief in the city of
Aguilar
became the first woman journalist to disappear in
The case of
women journalists also bring to light an aspect that has received little
attention in reports on attacks against the press: the particular vulnerability
faced by women journalists because of their gender.
"There
are differences between an attack on a male journalist and an attack on a
female journalist," Lucía Lagunes, director of Women's Communication and
Information (CIMAC), told IPS.
"And
it's basically seen in two things: one has to do with the family, because the
man is threatened directly while a woman is almost always told that they will
hurt her family. The second is sexual violence and slander that ruins women's
reputations," she said.
She also
stressed that "women reporters always face double vulnerability, because
companies are more likely to support men who have been threatened, either
economically or with assistance to move to another city."
That is due
to "the belief that he is the head of the family, and that women are
supported by their husbands and our incomes are secondary," said the
director of CIMAC, a non-governmental organisation that advocates women's
rights through communication.
That was the
case of Karla Tinoco, the correspondent in the northeastern state of
The
executives of Multimedios Laguna, which owns the regional newspaper and the
national paper Milenio, and Tinoco's own colleagues decided that her presence
on the staff posed a danger to everyone.
"Women
journalists are left on their own more easily by the media outlets they work
for," said Lagunes.
That also
happened to Mariscal, a veteran reporter who was the
Mariscal and
her husband, Isaín Mandujano, correspondent for the weekly Proceso
newsmagazine, also published in the capital, have been constantly harassed by
the state government, she told the Senate last week.
"We
have received emails and messages in Twitter where I am attacked not for my
work, but for personal things," Mariscal told IPS, commenting on the sexist
element in the attacks.
"They
are offensive anonymous messages that say, for example, 'do you know who Isaín
is with?', 'why does he leave you all by yourself?', or 'he doesn't love you'.
And they send him messages that say 'Ángeles is neurotic, how can you put up
with her?', and scornful insulting things about me, that have nothing to do
with my work," she said.
Organisations
that defend freedom of expression estimate that between 13 and 20 percent of
attacks on the press in
What has
been proven is that a majority of threats and attacks on women journalists come
from police and government authorities.
"The
sexual connotations in the threats are elements that represent a double attack
on women," Lagunes said.
The new wave
of death threats received by Lydia Cacho began with a Jun. 14 email sent to the
foundation she heads, which is based in
In "The
Demons of Eden", Cacho exposed a child prostitution, pornography and
trafficking ring that operated in Cancún, in the southwestern state of Quintana
Roo, and was allegedly protected by powerful local politicians and
businesspeople.
In December
2006 she was illegally detained for 24 hours on orders from Marín, who was then
governor of the southwestern state of
Since she
reported the latest threats, she has been the target of sexist slurs on social
networking sites.
Carmen
Aristegui, Mexico's most popular female radio anchorwoman, was also the focus
of sexist comments after she was fired in February for supposedly violating the
code of ethics of her employer, the MVS Noticias station, by "broadcasting
rumour as news."
The reporter
was sacked after she referred to allegations by opposition lawmakers that
President Felipe Calderón has a drinking problem, and said the accusation was
serious and merited a response from the government.
Hundreds of
people held a protest rally in response to Aristegui's dismissal, and she
accused the government of censorship. Finally, after negotiations with the station,
she was reinstated, in what her supporters saw as a victory for the public.
But her
critics did not stop their sexist insults: "menopausal prostitute"
she was called in Facebook.
"You
need a good f**k", "neurotic" and "hysterical" were
among the frequent insults received by both Cacho and
"No one
would say any of that about male reporters," Lagunes said.
Luis
Guillermo Hernández, a member of the Los Queremos Vivos collective, which organises
protests against attacks on journalists, also told IPS there were "marked
differences" in the treatment received by women in many professions, which
he said forms part of "a social dynamic that we have been unable to
successfully combat."
He also said
"I haven't seen women journalists organising with a gender vision to
defend cases like those of
In a report
published in June, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
interviewed 52 female and male journalists from around the world who have
suffered sexual abuse, ranging from verbal sexual harassment and groping to
rape.
"The
Silencing Crime: Sexual Violence and Journalists", produced by CPJ senior
editor Lauren Wolfe with support from the International Women's Media
Foundation, stresses that reporters who are victims of sexual abuse usually
keep it quiet, due to cultural and social stigmas and the fear of being
reassigned or denied future assignments.