Escalation of journalist murders in Mexico amid intensifying drug war

(Patria) - Another journalist has been killed in Mexico, increasing the list of journalists who have lost their lives amid the intensifying drug war, authorities and a media freedom organization announced.

Nelson Matus was shot and killed on the outskirts of Acapulco in southwestern Mexico,
officials and the organization Article 19 confirmed. Matus was the director of the local news
organization, Lo Real de Guerrero, which reported on the intensifying violence in the Mexican
state of Guerrero. He had already survived an assassination attempt in 2019, AP reports.

Matus's death comes just a week after the gruesome murder of another journalist in western Mexico, something the Committee to Protect Journalists said "underscores the crisis of deadly violence and impunity that continues to plague Mexico's press".

The death illustrates the worrying increase in journalist murders in Mexico and the damage that the country's intensifying drug war has taken on local newsrooms, which often report more microscopically on violence. Matus's newsroom is no exception.

For years, Acapulco was known for its resorts, but it has increasingly become a center of violence. On the same day Matus was reported killed, a news organization published a story about authorities finding a dead body in a bag near a tourist beach in the city.

In the past five years, the murders of at least 52 journalists have been documented in Mexico. Last year, Mexico was the second deadliest place in the world for journalists, after Ukraine.