Mexican Journalists Push Back

CBSNews.com is running an AP story about how Mexican reporters, "frustrated by fruitless police probes of slain and missing journalists," are making a stand by publishing reports on the cases.

It's very difficult to report on crime in many parts of Mexico, like Nuevo Laredo, where, as I noted in March, local newspapers recently played down a story about a deadly shooting. "If we publish it, we die," one local editor told the San Antonio Express-News.

Monday's article, which was run simultaneously in more than 100 Mexican papers, focused on the disappearance of a 26-year-old named Alfredo Jimenez Mota, who covered drug trafficking in the border town of Hermosillo, Sonora, near Arizona. The story named families tied to drug trafficking and pointed to evidence indicating Jimenez' likely abductor. It also suggested that police may have had something to do with his disappearance.

The AP reports that Mexican journalists hope that their decision to publish the story simultaneously will protect them from revenge attacks.

Yesterday's effort was a sign that the Mexican media is determined to tell the country's stories, even if Mexican officials are unwilling to adequately protect journalists. It was "the first step to combat organized crime and that other enemy of the press – self censorship – in a united manner," said Enrique Santos Calderon of the Bogota, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo.

We tip our hats to all of the brave journalists involved.