Journalists become targets in Mexico drug war

'We just want the truth'
Rodriguez's desk at El Diario is much as he left it, notebooks and police communiques stacked haphazardly. El Diario director Pedro Torres says he wants a full investigation, but police have shown little interest.

Hours after The Associated Press asked the office of Mexico's attorney general why nobody had examined Rodriguez's computer, El Diario editors say federal investigators called to say they were sending someone to pick it up. The attorney general's office never got back to the AP.

"We're not interested in making him a martyr. We just want the truth," Torres said. "We feel so helpless, so angry — but not afraid. Because, I insist, you cannot do journalism with fear."

Jorge Luis Aguirre, director of news Web site La Polaka, agrees. As he was driving to Rodriguez's wake, his cell phone rang.

"You're next," said a voice.

Aguirre parked his car, called his wife and fled to the U.S. with his family. He plans to apply for asylum.

"Any journalist in Juarez is at risk right now of being assassinated just because someone doesn't like what you published," he said in a telephone interview from hiding.

'Against freedom of expression'
Media-freedom groups are pushing for the U.S. to grant such requests, and are lobbying Mexico's Congress to pass a bill that would make attacks on the news media a federal crime.

"This violence has gone way beyond the press," said Carlos Lauria of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "It's going against freedom of expression."

It is also insanely brutal. Dayer has seen the worst of it this year, from human legs protruding from a large pot commonly used to cook pork, to a body hanging inside a house with a pig mask over the face. When the death count reached eight in the span of an hour, he called his wife and told her to take the kids inside.

Once, as he photographed a headless body hanging from an overpass, someone noticed a man in a car nearby taking pictures of the journalists. A photographer went over to ask what he was doing, but the man sped away. Later in the day, the head was found in a trash bag at the foot of the city's 28-year-old Journalist Monument, a statue of a newspaper delivery boy.

"I think about that day a lot now," Dayer said.

Extraordinary risks
Juarez's journalists take extraordinary risks for their daily blood-and-gore reports. They careen through traffic, often arriving at crime scenes before the police. Photographers have stumbled across hitmen who fired shots, pistol-whipped them and stole their cameras.

On a recent morning, an AP reporter accompanied a TV crew as it plied the streets looking for the day's dead. The police scanner reported an armed man in a white car nearby, and the driver swung into pursuit. A wailing police car raced up behind the crew, as TV and radio correspondent Ever Chavez screamed at the driver.

"Not too close! Get back!" he said.

The police car stopped the white car and dragged out two men as Chavez moved in with his microphone. Police pulled a black handgun from one of the men's pockets, but it turned out to be plastic. Chavez went on the air.

"That's the report we have so far," Chavez said cheerily. "Be careful out there, and have a good morning."

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