Reportero, a powerful film on brave Mexican reporters

A new film Reportero has just been released documenting the daring work of Mexican reporters with the muckraking Tijuana weekly Zeta. Covering the drug wars the magazine which brands itself as "libre como el viento" (free like the wind) has been targeted by the narcos and paid a heavy price for exposing their violence.
In 2000 I had met its founder Jesus Blancornelas in Bogota where he had been awarded the prestigious UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize for freedom of the press. When I went out for dinner with him he wore a flak jacket and chose to sit in front of the door "just to see if they are coming". He was weakened by multiple bullet wounds that he had suffered 3 years earlier during a attack on his life by cartel drug sicarios.When he died in 2006 he was praised as "the spiritual godfather of modern Mexican journalism".
"He never sold out", said the president of a Tijuana's lawyers association. 32 years after the launch of the news weekly a team of reporters are still there, refusing to sell out and doggedly investigating the drug business and official corruption. Their work is a lesson of journalism, it is a lesson for all journalists.
The film should also lead to a reflection on how a personal drug addiction, sometimes seen as inoffensive and "hip", contributes to the brutal death of thousands of people and undermines press freedom and human rights in countries like Mexico.
Read CPJ's blog on the film which was presented this week in New York at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
http://cpj.org/blog/2012/06/film-reportero-features-tenacious-mexican-magazine.php