TEGUCIGALPA - The assassination of journalist Luis Arturo Mondragon brings the number of media professionals killed this year in Honduras to nine, making it the most unsafe country for journalists.
Mondragon, who was news director for Channel 19 in the city of El Paraíso, was shot dead last night as he was sitting with his son on the sidewalk outside his house, minutes after his program.
He had received death threats for exposing corrupt local and national officials.
The media has been one of the sectors most affected since the June 28 coup, with over 300 attacks reported, including assassination, abuse, intimidation, censorship, and the shutdown of news agencies.
The nine journalists killed to date this year belonged to different news media in different regions, and the majority had used their programs to denounce human rights violations and cases of corruption or drug trafficking.
According to Honduran news reports, Mondragon supported the coup. This lends itself to a preferred "fair and balanced" narrative in English language media, that downplays the targeting of journalists who opposed the coup.
Unlike other English language coverage, the Inside Costa Rica story correctly notes that the majority of journalists killed have been opposed to the coup.
The AP story is more typical of English language coverage of the dire situation for Honduran journalists. It includes the now-standard oversimplification about the case of Karol Cabrera, whose daughter was shot in an apparent soccer gang incident last year, and whose colleague Joseph Ochoa was shot in an incident that Cabrera claims was intended to target her. In the latter case, the parents of the murdered colleague claim Cabrera actually arranged the attack to eliminate competition from her son. But that does not stop the AP from presenting Cabrera as a political exile targeted in both incidents.
More perniciously, the AP story, reported from Tegucigalpa by Freddy Cuevas, continues a pattern of police reframing of each of these incidents as personal, stemming from a general climate of lawlessness. According to a police representative, Mondragon was accused of sexual assault and stealing cattle, possible motives they are investigating.
Also typical of this kind of reporting, which obscures the real surge in killings due to the targeting of anti-coup journalists, the reporter adopts a long time frame that reaches back before the coup to conclude that "more than 50 lawyers, politicians, businessmen, and journalists have been killed in the last two years."
But it is only after the coup d'Etat that the spike in deaths of journalists has occurred, with seven since March alone according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Unlike the Honduran Police, the CPJ points to Mondragon's history of reporting about local "government corruption, environmental issues, and crime" as possible motives.
The majority of the targets of the attacks this year have not been people like Cabrera or Mondragon, who were in favor of the coup d'Etat. They have been people like José Bayardo Mairena, Manuel Juarez, and Nahum Palacios, none named in the AP story, who were reporting on the Aguan conflict. Palacios, in particular, was targeted with threats after the coup for his vocal opposition to it.
10 comments:
The CPJ announcement offers a slightly different acount than you imply. They state quite clearly that the threats have been going on for 2 years - which puts the threats origin during the Zelaya Administration. If he was exposing government corruption two years ago, at the local level, this is not tied directly to the Coup. Additionally, he did not specialize nor was he exclusive in these areas, "government corruption, environmental issues, and crime", they were merely subjects he covered along with countless others. Mondragon has had enemies for years and is widely known. Police mention only 2 of at least 5 charges houdning him since 2005. Maybe anti-coup journalists are being murdered for their anti-coup beliefs. Maybe not. It is evasiveness to speak of the "majority" of a pool of 7 when 2-3 are clearly in the other camp (a majority by 1 in apool of 7?). Additionally, for every anti-coup story a murdered journalist did they did 10x-20x as many non-coup stories that angered people, too. By focusing on the small percentage of stories done by a small percentage of journalists, and ignoring data that doesn't fit the theory which predetermines what evidence you take seriously, you condemn AP writers (who are usually idiots, admitted) - but your explanations are no better than those of AP. You might be right, but you haven't proved much of anything regarding the murdered journalists. What the account misses is how many journalists have quit or fled the country BEFORE they got killed - and the majority of these are certainly not anti-coup writers. There are other factors at play.
Carina is concerned here to do what in fact the Honduran press has been doing: argue that the coup and the following state violence has not affected journalists. But she is wrong. The total death toll this year-- in 2010-- is up to 9 journalists killed. That is, as every independent report notes, a sharp increase. There is no seamless story to tell of murders of journalists going along at the same pace before, during, and after the coup. Journalists began to be threatened openly, media outlets were destroyed, and journalists have been killed in increasing numbers since the coup of June 28, 2010.
The second argument Carina is echoing is that of the Minister of Security and police, who seek to explain the increase number of murders of journalists and activists as consequences of other things. Again, all the international watchdogs have called for investigations of these murders that take seriously the connection between the violence unleashed in the wake of the coup and these deaths.
Four out of seven-- if we used Carina's counting method, which is flawed especially since the number of journalists killed is, regrettably, not seven-- it is 9 this year alone-- is actually a majority. And more important: it is a group where it is highly questionable that their reporting was unrelated to their deaths.
Most interesting is Carina's logic that anti-coup journalists were killed for other reporting because other reports were a majority of their reporting. This is, to use her own friendly term, idiotic.
Carina is concerned to downplay the violence of the coup and the de facto regime, and the continuing violence which is a legacy of the coup that survives and, as measured by the deaths of journalists, has actually increased during the administration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. I am not the one trying to prove something-- she is.
My post was a critique of the way that most English language reporting, overly dependent on a few tried and true themes and insufficiently skeptical of the Honduran police, has failed to note the large number of those killed who did oppose the coup and/or report on the political unrest in the Bajo Aguan; and the tendency to simplify explanation of the spike in deaths of journalists as a consequence of a presumed Honduran lawlessness.
Carina, though, does have something she wants to prove. She wants to prove that "the threats have been going on for 2 years- which puts the threats origin during the Zelaya Administration". But note that there is a vast difference between CPJ reviewing the record of the past two years (they could have chosen a longer or shorter interval) and trying to argue-- as Carina does here-- that an increase in violence against journalists is not, in fact, an increase.
The question is, why is there so much more violence against the media now? and the answer to that is self-evident: the de facto regime promulgated attacks on media who disagreed with them. That created an atmosphere of lawlessness and that atmosphere of lawlessness continues today. It began June 28, not before.
Carina is concerned here to do what in fact the Honduran press has been doing: argue that the coup and the following state violence has not affected journalists. But she is wrong. The total death toll this year-- in 2010-- is up to 9 journalists killed. That is, as every independent report notes, a sharp increase. There is no seamless story to tell of murders of journalists going along at the same pace before, during, and after the coup. Journalists began to be threatened openly, media outlets were destroyed, and journalists have been killed in increasing numbers since the coup of June 28, 2010.
The second argument Carina is echoing is that of the Minister of Security and police, who seek to explain the increase number of murders of journalists and activists as consequences of other things. Again, all the international watchdogs have called for investigations of these murders that take seriously the connection between the violence unleashed in the wake of the coup and these deaths.
Four out of seven-- if we used Carina's counting method, which is flawed especially since the number of journalists killed is, regrettably, not seven-- it is 9 this year alone-- is actually a majority. And more important: it is a group where it is highly questionable that their reporting was unrelated to their deaths.
Most interesting is Carina's logic that anti-coup journalists were killed for other reporting because other reports were a majority of their reporting. This is, to use her own friendly term, idiotic.
Carina is concerned to downplay the violence of the coup and the de facto regime, and the continuing violence which is a legacy of the coup that survives and, as measured by the deaths of journalists, has actually increased during the administration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. I am not the one trying to prove something-- she is.
My post was a critique of the way that most English language reporting, overly dependent on a few tried and true themes and insufficiently skeptical of the Honduran police, has failed to note the large number of those killed who did oppose the coup and/or report on the political unrest in the Bajo Aguan; and the tendency to simplify explanation of the spike in deaths of journalists as a consequence of a presumed Honduran lawlessness.
Carina, though, does have something she wants to prove. She wants to prove that "the threats have been going on for 2 years- which puts the threats origin during the Zelaya Administration". But note that there is a vast difference between CPJ reviewing the record of the past two years (they could have chosen a longer or shorter interval) and trying to argue-- as Carina does here-- that an increase in violence against journalists is not, in fact, an increase.
The question is, why is there so much more violence against the media now? and the answer to that is self-evident: the de facto regime promulgated attacks on media who disagreed with them. That created an atmosphere of lawlessness and that atmosphere of lawlessness continues today. It began June 28, not before.
Interested readers may want to review the CPJ data on murders of journalists in Honduras, a data set stretching back to 1992:
1993: 1
2003: 1
2007: 1
2009: 2
2010: 9
1993: Carlos Grant "the local correspondent for the Tegucigalpa daily El Tiempo in the town of El Progreso, was shot dead by a local money lender who was upset about an article Grant wrote."
2003: Germán Antonio Rivas, "owner of the local TV station Corporación Maya Visión-Canal 7, was murdered outside his station's studios in the western city of Santa Rosa de Copán, near the border between Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador." CPJ notes that after a previous attempt on his life, Rivas suggested retaliation for reporting on "the smuggling of coffee and cattle from Honduras to Guatemala" or "local neighborhood associations that have denounced a local mining company for spilling cyanide into Copán Department's Lara River."
2007: Carlos Salgado, believed to be "in retaliation for the station's critical reporting on official corruption".
2009: Rafael Munguía Ortiz, described by CPJ as the "local correspondent for the national Radio Cadena Voces (RCV)", killed in San Pedro Sula in March. Colleagues suggested that his reporting "on violence and organized crime" was related to his death.
So, according to CPJ, there were four journalists murdered from 1992 until the coup d'etat of 2009.
Compare this to the total of 10-- one in July 2009, and nine so far in 2010-- after the coup.
This is why I am arguing that the "in the last two years" phrase, with its implication that what we are seeing now is simply a continuation of a previous situation, is misleading.
And it is not just the numbers: three journalists killed since June 28 reported on resistance to the coup, and another three reported about the politically contentious Bajo Aguan area:
Garbiel Fino Noriega was killed on July 3, 2009 leaving the Estelar Radio station in San Juan Pueblo, Atlantida. COFADEH lists this as a politically motivated murder, noting "At the time, he was reporting on the popular referendum promoted by the Office of the President, protests against the coup d’état, and denunciations of those supporting the coup. "
Jorge Alberto Orellana, reporter with Televisión de Honduras in San Pedro Sula when he was killed in April, left his previous employer, Televicentro "because of discomfort with the station’s editorial position in support of the interim government".
Manuel Juárez and José Bayardo Mairena, journalists for local radio stations Super 10 and Excélsior, were killed in an attack in March in Catacamas. Mairena's assignments included "coverage of organized crime and a land dispute in the Aguán region".
Nahúm Palacios, reporter for TV Channel 5 and Radio Tocoa "covered drug trafficking, violence, local politics, and an agrarian conflict between landowners and peasants in the Aguán region", where Tocoa is located. "Palacios had received recent, anonymous death threats" and in 2009 was "threatened by members of the military for his critical coverage of the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya"; his "home and office were raided and his equipment was confiscated in an effort to intimidate him".
David Meza, reporter for radio station El Patio in La Ceiba, "handled general assignments, including drug trafficking and organized crime in the country’s coastal region" and had "recently been warned by unknown callers to be 'careful' in his reporting."
Finally, Joseph Hernández, an entertainment journalist with TV Channel 51 in Tegucigalpa, was shot and killed while traveling in Tegucigalpa with Carol Cabrera.
Surely this is too much of a coincidence to attribute to random chance?
I did not argue that the coup left journalists unaffected. Also, I did not argue that they are dead because of non-coup stories they did. I merely stated the logical obvious: if someone did a dozen anti-coup stories and 250 non-coup-related stories, most of which upset people, you do not know for sure the coup story got them killed. That is the claim in a nutshell, nothing more elaborate than that. Honduras has a problem that goes far beyond journalists. If the murder rate of regular people were the same while the murder rate of journalists skyrocketed, that would be incredibly significant. But, that is not what is happening. Murders are occuring in insane frequencies all over the place, all the time 99% of which do not involve journalists. This doesn't prove the journalists were not targets due to their profession, but it cannot be ignored. Think of it another way. Suppose you are right and the coup is getting even with journalists. Well, then who is getting even with pupleria owners, taxi drivers, 3rd shift workers, travelers, etc., etc., etc.? What you overlook when you focus only on journalists is that revenge and score-settling is rampant in Honduras right now (I live here, remember - it isn't a blog to me). Additionally, journalist here is and for a long time has been an "entrprenuerial profession" - much like policing (one way to get money is write articles about bad people; another way to get money is from people so you dont write the bad article). This brings risk, too. In a time of lawlessness, the risk is magnified exponentially. Police are more ineffective than ever. Any number of people can be, and are, killed and it is blaimed on the coup or the resistance or the police - even though there is no evidence of this. I never said you were wrong; I said you have not proven you are right. There are other questions beyond those you ask. Imagine you are not right for a minute: for example, why bother killing a reasonably unimportant reporter who is said to be anti-coup becuase he did 4 pieces against the coup, long after the coup and after elections when it is detined for front page news and the latest CPJ update? It serves no purpose, and doing so only attracts attention. It is definitely NOT obvious or self-evident that the reason there is now so much anit-journalistic sentiment and outright murder is that the coup forces are punishing those who disagreed with them (they won). No atmosphere of lawlessness was created by attacks on the media. This lawlessness is not unique in Honduras. Think of it as "little Mexico" because that is now what it is. You dont need a dictatorship or a coup to end up in this dreaded spot.
(1) Carina continues to try to claim a privileged position by virtue of living in Honduras. So let's recap why being in a place does not confer omniscience: she does not know the experience and opinions of everyone in Honduras. She is not the "typical" Honduran. Her understanding of what is happening in Honduras is affected by political bias (here, a desperate desire to argue that an increase in killings that all international groups see as politically motivated is not) and she is dependent on media in Honduras that promote markedly unrealistic views of the country.
(2) One of these misleading views of Honduras, which anthropologist Adrienne Pine called attention to in her book Working Hard, Drinking Hard", is to claim that there is simply a Honduran "lawlessness" that is responsible for (fill in the blanks here). This is often done, as Carina does here, without any actual information. So we have here anecdotal reference to the supposed huge increases in killings of pulperia owners. Every death matters, but there is no credible source indicating that the murder rate in Honduras generally has increased 8-fold. The murder rate among journalists has increased that much before/after the coup, and the current year is not yet over.
(3) Carina introduces a generalized slander on journalism, apparently thinking that she can justify the deaths of these journalists by implying they were on the take. I cannot even think of how to comment on this. Is the idea that journalists deserve to be murdered? that it is surprising they aren't more often?
(4) She repeats her claim that it is "logical" to assume that if journalists are killed for the more numerous articles they write than for a few about politically sensitive topics. Well, no. A journalist can be targeted for writing as few as one story that disturbs a powerful and violent person. The illogic in Carina's "majority rules" argument is that treating all stories as equal; the content of news stories does matter.
(5) Finally-- and there are so many bad assumptions and non sequiturs in Carina's comments that it is hard to stop analyzing them, but it is truly, truly not worth it (so no further comments will be posted on this item pursuing her arguments): finally, to say
No atmosphere of lawlessness was created by attacks on the media.
ignores the long list of documented attacks on media outlets since the coup that include military invasions of broadcast stations, destruction of equipment, death threats-- including those received by several of the journalists later killed, a point Carina conveniently ignores-- and the passage of repressive dictatorial decrees by the de facto regime, rumor-mongering to undercut the authority of specific journalists (including the vague but still nasty implications of Carina's post), and the sharp upward spike in attacks on journalists and fatalities of journalists.
Carina betrays her real reason for objecting to my post here. She does not want to acknowledge that her country's rule of law was destroyed by a coup d'etat and the dictatorship it installed. My immediate reaction against the coup, and continued documentation of the legacy it has left in Honduras, in contrast, is based on recognition that the coup and the de facto regime were destructive for the rule of law.
Since I left Honduras 12/2009 I have relied on your blogs for the kind of information I rarely find elsewhere. Although I don’t agree with everything I read here, I certainly find it informative and well documented. I have a special interest in this topic. From 1992-2007 I routinely did private security and investigative work in Honduras. Often this dealt directly with journalists and to the extent that we often had parallel interests. I was there firsthand in cases of people who were charged with the rather unbelievable crime of “practicing journalism without a license”. I had at times done work for and with Radio Cadena Voces. Some of my earliest assignments were up north and I knew El Tiempo’s Carlos Grant who was shot in 1993. RCV’s Carlos Salgado, who was murdered in 2007, was a family friend. I had also on occasion worked with RCV’s Rafe Ortiz, who was just murdered last year. So it isn’t just an occupational interest that I have, I knew these people and respected what they did.
I mention this summary to preface what I am about to say, which is not meant to judge the deceased this year or previous years: the claim by Carina that journalism is as she puts it, “an entrepreneurial profession” is, quite simply, true. It is unfortunate and not true of all journalists but it is a statement of fact. This would be considered common knowledge in Honduras and is accepted as such by most investigative bodies inside and outside the country. This is true even at CPJ – though they rarely today admit it publically, though throughout my work era they certainly did. When I was in the capital, the standard CPJ tagline for more than a decade on anything issued on Honduras ended with: “…In Honduras Investigative journalism is almost nonexistent. Honduran journalists remain vulnerable to bribes and other economic pressures because of their low salaries…”. A version of this was also used in the concluding section of their annual, “Attacks on the press” series, issued by country (this might not be online in executive summary or full background data). In the late 1990’s these statements were often accompanied by another stand-by usually offered in tandem with an accusation of government repression: “…and the level of ccorruption among local journalists themselves has cast a long shadow over press freedom in Honduras”. They were used and quoted so often they are committed to memory. I believe they stopped using these lines around the time of the Zelaya election, but there was no good reason to back peddle from the charge. Very little has changed in this regard.
This needs to be included in any summary of the current violence against journalists but is almost never mentioned. Again, I say this not as a judgment of those who have been gunned down but as an explanation of the big-picture plaguing the profession and the country. I think you have read something into what she said or perhaps she commented elsewhere on this site, too. But, there is no talk of “justification” in her statement and I do not see that she is dealing with “just desserts”. It is not a matter of what people deserve since she is describing life as it is, so it is a factual claim not slander. Though I disagree with much of what she says I think she does make select points that are not covered in the mainstream but are also not covered by you here on your site. In 15 years in a job dealing with some of the best and worst people I have met in my life, the first thing I learned was that things are never as they seem. In any corruption, extortion, or murder case I ever heard of or worked on, it is fairly rare to believe the same thing on the first and last day of the inquiry. There is no excuse for what it going on in Honduras right now, per journalists or anyone else. But, I don’t believe good details have been released on one single murdered journalist. While it seems obvious this is anti-coup payback, I wouldn’t bet on it (not very much anyway, not yet).
Thank you for your comment, and thanks for reading.
Carina is in fact consistent throughout her comments-- including those that I have not published-- in trying to minimize the effects of the coup d'etat. Her comments on journalists' deaths are part of that continual effort.
The failure of journalism in Honduras to meet international standards was clear throughout the run up to the coup, and has largely been clear since then in the reporting of events under the de facto regime and Porfirio Lobo Sosa's administration.
But that does not in any way address the reality that journalists are dying at much higher rates than the general population. Some of those killed had received specific death threats, in some cases clearly due to anti-coup activism.
While I respect your experience, I disagree that the deaths of these individuals need to be linked to a statement that journalists in Honduras are vulnerable to bribes or payoffs. In the context of a journalist's death, such a statement unfortunately must be read as a statement about that individual.
Radio reporters, in particular, distinguished themselves during the de facto regime as alternative sources of reporting that helped people both in Honduras and outside to hear a wider range of opinions, and reports-- some of which I felt, listening to the radio, could have benefited from contextualization that well-trained, professional journalists would have provided.
If it seems important to say that the Honduran press has historically been a poor guarantor of public information, consider it said. But it is inconceivable that ten deaths of journalists in less than a year, following a period when the average death rate for journalists was less than one per year (going back to 1992), is unrelated to the upheaval in the country initiated by the coup d'etat.
I didn’t mean to imply that the vulnerability disclaimer should be tied to a specific person. It is certainly not something appropriate for an obituary, etc. But, for a serious inquiry into the greater issues it would be necessary on some level. There is no way to offer a complete, detailed picture of why so many more journalists are being murdered without covering how, why, and under what circumstances journalists were previously murdered, and whether or not any of those same conditions or factors are present per the murder of non-journalists in the general population (if journalist murders have nothing in common per the murders of those in the general population, then the corresponding murder rates between the two groups is of little investigative value). I was not able to locate online the exact sort of comments I routinely saw over many years and some might pre-date electronic files. However, there are several. I offer one as an example; it addresses your concern and it shows that CPJ, the “defender”, was willing to do the sort of thing you perhaps think should not be done. See 2002 Press Attacks Summary: http://cpj.org/2003/03/attacks-on-the-press-2002-honduras-1.php. Note that they do not shy away from naming people; then note the concluding paragraph. This is far from the best example I recall, but it is the only one I quickly found online. CPJ routinely framed complaints, threats, attacks, and murders with such statements.
While this is true, “it is inconceivable that ten deaths of journalists in less than a year, following a period when the average death rate for journalists was less than one per year…is unrelated to the upheaval in the country initiated by the coup d'etat”, it will depend on what can be covered by “unrelated to the upheaval” (coup monopolies, local corruption, mining concessions, drug trafficking, land disputes – is everything “political” covered under a coup umbrella or is there a cutoff?). The problem is that so few of the standard journalistic essentials (who, what, where, when, how and why) are available in the journalist murders. Related to this, the anti-coup journalist’s works aren’t really examined since they are anti-coup and often presumed to be all-but anomalies in the coup murder count (maybe, maybe not). Their murders cannot be attributed to lawlessness as that is not in itself a motive. It is not inconceivable that 1 of the anti-coup journalists shares something essential with 1 of the pro-coup journalists, as these people routinely covered local corruption, drug trafficking, basic crimes, etc. (this will never be known if no one looks). While in the end, obviously, the 10 are a group of people unjustly murdered, there is no way of knowing yet if this really is a group of 6, 8, or 10 in some other way, too. The specifics of the anti-coup journalists works are also rarely if ever discussed anywhere. No summaries, bibliographies, replays, analysis, etc. – virtually nothing serious at all. This is likely because since they are anti-coup and there is obvious payback going on, it is assumed no further content inquiry is needed. If personal analyses are viewed in bad taste then it will never be known if one or more of the 10 were killed per some other issue, by people who knew the coup would be the assumed motive. These are big mistakes theoretically and “politically” – and they run the risk of setting up a circular argument to explain why this is happening. Without a real investigation, critics are left with too much unrefuted ammunition – for the lack of a better word. Though a believer, I admit I am suspicious as to why so few people seem interested in really investigating what the murdered journalists actually said (who it really harmed, given the outcome), who they knew, what it meant and if any of it linked to anything other than, or in addition to, the coup proper
This is the last comment I will publish on this post; for one thing, I have written a later post on this; for another, we are simply circling around the same differences of opinion in different words. Finally, we just have to move on.
(1) I did review each death of a journalist documented by CPJ back to the early 1990s, including the evidence they cite for whether or not the deaths had to do with reporting.
(2) is everything “political” covered under a coup umbrella or is there a cutoff?
Everything is covered under a coup umbrella. For the argument for why, there are months worth of reporting on this and the preceding blog, and on other blogs-- and yes, the lack of reporting by mainstream media is striking-- about the economic motivations and economic beneficiaries of the coup. The coup was, to paraphrase sociologist Leticia Salomon, among others, about money.
(3) I am suspicious as to why so few people seem interested in really investigating what the murdered journalists actually said (who it really harmed, given the outcome), who they knew, what it meant and if any of it linked to anything other than, or in addition to, the coup proper
From your pen to the eyes of the mainstream media, who MIGHT have the resources to investigate. Until then, I will reiterate: when someone gets death threats about their reporting and is then killed, the inference that they were killed for their reporting is reasonable. I have pointed out, repeatedly, that many of the dead were reporting in and on the Bajo Aguan. That might be a place to begin.
(4) local corruption, drug trafficking, and other reasons to kill journalists existed before June 28. What changed is that impunity became the law of the land. Sorry-- you don't convince me that the sharp rise in deaths of journalists is simply accidental.
And I, obviously, am not convincing you that this is something to be concerned about, and to attribute to the disruption of social order and lawfulness that the coup represents. But I thank you for reading and for your comments.
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