JOURNALIST KILLED IN MEXICO, 9TH THIS YEAR

Another journalist was found dead in northern Mexico on Thursday, the ninth media worker killed in the country so far this year.

Prosecutors in the northern state of Sinaloa said the body of Luis Enrique Ramirez Ramos was found on a dirt road near the state capital, Culiacan.

Ramirez Ramos, 59, was the ninth reporter or photographer killed this year in Mexico, making the country the most dangerous place in the world for the press outside war zones.

Ramirez Ramos’ news website, “Fuentes Fidedignas,” or “Reliable Sources,” said that he had been abducted near his house earlier.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it lamented the killing and “calls on authorities to urgently investigate this act.”

Ramirez Ramos is listed as “founding director” of the website, which has reported relatively little on the drug cartel violence that plagues Sinaloa, which is home to the cartel of the same name.

Fuentes Fidedignas did, however, report on local political disputes, which is often a risky subject for reporters in provincial Mexico.

But the website also includes a section on “good news” about Sinaloa, and in its mission statement says “just as we denounce vices and corruption, we also cover the industrious, hard working and generous nature that our good people give the state.”

Francisco Chiquete, a fellow reporter in Culiacan, said “Luis Enrique Ramirez was a very professional and capable journalist” and noted he had expressed fears about retaliation for his work as long ago as 2015. However, Chiquete said he wasn’t aware of any more recent threats against his colleague.

Many killings of journalists in recent years in Mexico have been blamed on drug cartels, and journalists in the most violent cities, like Culiacan, often avoid the topic of cartels for their own safety.

Mexico’s state and federal governments have been criticized for neither preventing the killings nor investigating them sufficiently.

While President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised a “zero impunity” program to investigate the killings, on Thursday the head of that program listed only six killings of journalists this year, even though there have been eight.

And the president continues his frequent verbal attacks on journalists whose stories he dislikes.