Mexican investigative crime reporters receive death threats

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published 5 months ago |  CPJ News Alert

Mexican authorities must immediately and credibly investigate death threats against two crime reporters, Óscar Balderas and Luis Chaparro, and take all appropriate steps to guarantee their safety and that of other reporters covering organized crime, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. 

Balderas, a well-known investigative journalist, reported on July 4 on X that he had received a threatening call from an unidentified individual using an unknown number. In the call, that person used profanity and said that Balderas should “tone it down” or he would “face the consequences.” The caller did not specify a particular story Balderas had written.

The next day, Balderas received a message via WhatsApp, again from an unknown number, in which the sender repeated that the journalist should “keep quiet,” while also referring to Balderas’ friend and fellow reporter Luis Chaparro, issuing the same threat to him. Chaparro told CPJ that he had not personally received threats, but that Balderas had notified him of the message and the phone call.

The threats came just weeks after unidentified assailants killed two journalists in Mexico.

“The brazen threats against Óscar Balderas and Luis Chaparro are part of an ongoing campaign to terrorize any journalist who provides in-depth reporting on organized crime in Mexico,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “These threats can only happen in a context of festering impunity for the country’s press, something Mexican authorities continue to fail address.”

Both Balderas and Chaparro are experienced investigative reporters. Balderas hosts and contributes to several news shows on nationally syndicated radio and television channels, including La Saga, Milenio, ADN40, and MVS Noticias. Chaparro, formerly based in the northern city of Ciudad Juárez but now in the United States, hosts the online news show Pie de Nota.

Balderas told CPJ that he has been in constant contact with the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which is overseen by the interior ministry, about the threats. Neither journalist has filed a report with the police.

An official for the Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via WhatsApp.