Mexico's Journalists Feel Heavy Hand of Violence

"They're going out in pools to cover crime stories, like Nicaragua 20 years ago or Baghdad now," said Alfonso Teja, a veteran television journalist at TV Azteca, where López works.

Frequently, journalists here say, they now file crime stories based solely on police reports, without probing deeper. Reporters have to be so cautious that Teja fears Mexican journalism could slide back to the practices of a bygone era -- before Mexico shook off one-party rule in 2000 and began transforming into a true democracy. In those days, Teja said, the old reporters' saying was a version of "see no evil, hear no evil": "In Mexico, nothing happens, and when something happens, still nothing happens."

"Journalists are scared, and the situation is very grave," said Alejandro Gutiérrez, a writer at Mexico City-based Proceso magazine and author of an upcoming book, "Narco-Trafficking: Calderón's Great Challenge." "Information is one of the pillars of democracy."

At El Norte, a 68-year-old newspaper with more than 140,000 subscribers, editors now fuzz out the faces of all police officers in crime pictures -- a practice that is becoming less necessary because officers now often wear ski masks to crime scenes so they cannot be identified by drug cartel photographers.

El Norte reporters, like their competitors at Milenio, no longer put their bylines on stories and seldom try to conduct deep investigations for crime pieces, Eduardo Campos, a top editor at El Norte, said in an interview.

"Journalistic idealism is through," said Campos, who got his start more than 20 years ago writing hard-hitting investigative pieces and uses the "Rocky" movie theme as his cellphone ringer. "We're confronting reality. We've never seen anything like this. The debate is no longer theoretical."

Not long ago, two El Norte journalists -- a reporter and a photographer -- were kidnapped and beaten by drug cartel thugs, then released after several hours, according to newsroom sources. Word of the kidnapping raced through this city's journalism grapevine.

"I was thinking, 'What is happening to my profession?' " a seasoned Monterrey reporter said during an interview after slipping out of a crowded bar for fear of being recognized.

Journalists here anxiously awaited details of the kidnapping. Back in the El Norte newsroom, the journalists who had been kidnapped were terrified about inciting their abductors, a newsroom source said.

The story of their ordeal was never published.