Mexican Radio Silence

The WaPo's foreign desk today had a great story about how bad it's gotten for reporters in Mexico:

More than 30 journalists have been killed in the past six years in Mexico, including a television reporter in Acapulco and a print journalist in the northern state of Sonora in the month before López and Paredes disappeared. Countless others have been kidnapped in a campaign of intimidation largely attributed to the drug cartels.

As more reporters die, journalism itself is suffering. A newspaper in Sonora said last week that it was temporarily shutting down because of attacks and threats by criminal gangs. Top editors at the two largest newspapers here in Monterrey, Milenio and El Norte, said in interviews that they no longer ask crime reporters to dig deeply on their stories.

"I don't know how to do investigations without getting people killed," Roberta Gomez, Milenio's executive editor, said during an interview at a Monterrey seafood restaurant where gunmen opened fire during the lunch rush not long ago.

Crime reporters have begun requesting anonymity on stories, and rarely delve deeper than police reports. The suppression of the fourth estate through violence is bad for Mexican democracy, and gives too much power to both the government and the drug cartels.

UPDATE: Whoops. Forgot to link to the article.