Reporters risking their lives in Mexico's 'silenced zones'

Hey there!

It feels like spring is springing in the UK. In under a month, I’ll be celebrating a year of this newsletter and World Press Freedom Day is coming up. So please prepare to liberate your nearest reporter!

Jokes aside, press freedoms are something I’m very serious about – and so is everyone at TBIJ. You may remember that last year, me and my teammates Eleanor Rose and Ed Siddons organised a debate in parliament to bring to light stories that had been squashed by threats of prohibitively expensive legal action. As a journalist you can have the facts on your side, but if you come up against people with a lot of money, they can use the weight of their wealth to stop a story in its tracks.

I’ll hand over to Ed a little further down to tell you how that day in parliament went. But I’m happy to say that we, of course, are not the only ones fighting the corner of the journalists. Just a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a screening of State of Silence, a documentary that shines a light on the threats and obstructions Mexican journalists face as they go about their day-to-day.

State of Silence follows four journalists – Jesús Medina, Juan de Dios García Davish, María de Jesús Peters and March Vizcarra. Danger is all around. Hundreds of journalists have disappeared or been murdered in recent years. Others have been forced to leave the country. The film points to a web of collusion between organised crime and corrupt officials at all levels of government to suppress the press. The effect is “silenced zones”, regions of the country where there is no reporting to hold power to account. The film is a powerful call to stand up for the importance of press freedom.

I recently had the chance to catch up with Daniela Rodriguez, the impact producer for State of Silence. Since the film came out, Daniela has been busy doing the sorts of things I do in my day job to make sure people notice important stories and take steps to change things. So it was great to compare notes 🤓!

The film has been aired all over the world, from Germany to Indonesia, and in December bagged the best documentary award at the Red Sea International Film Festival. The festival was held in Saudi Arabia, a country where journalists have been murdered by the state simply for doing their job.

“It was incredible,” Daniela said about winning the award. “Knowing that this is one of the countries where journalism is threatened, it is amazing to see these groups that are fighting for journalists’ rights … it gives us the fire to keep fighting.”

Daniela has even arranged a screening for officials at the United Nations. Afterwards Volker Turk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that: “When democracy is threatened and the safety of journalists at risk, so too is the foundation of our societies.”

I agree with Volker!

Daniela ultimately hopes to get the film in front of the Mexican government and open discussions about improving the mechanisms that exist to protect journalists. As the director Santiago Maza said at a screening of the film in London last week: “The process needs more humanity and dignity.”

Meanwhile, Santiago, Daniela and the team are using the film as a tool to open the eyes of the next generation of journalists in Mexico, arranging screenings at different universities with journalism-related courses. “It’s really important for them to see the reality – most of the time when we’re studying in college we only see the guidelines.

“Yesterday we had a screening with one of the most important universities for journalism,” Daniela told me. “They were all a little bit scared afterwards but they also felt inspired, like, ‘Okay, this [system] doesn’t work but maybe we can do something’.”

Special update: Last September, I was able to speak to Ros Urwin, the reporter who spearheaded the joint Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into allegations of sexual assault and abuse against Russell Brand. Last week he was charged with rape, indecent assault and sexual assault, relating to four different women. He’s denied doing anything wrong.

If you’re a new subscriber, or missed it the first time around, it’s a great glimpse of the immense effort that went into the story and the massive hurdles the team faced to get it published in a difficult legal environment. Ros had to wait a year before she could even speak to me because of the year-long window for Brand to sue.

I’ll always try to keep you updated when a story I’ve covered leads to even more change – after all, that’s what I’m here for!

“As the first speaker rose, the room fell silent. A year’s reporting had led to the next two hours. Whether the project sank or swam was in the hands of parliament.

One by one, MPs from across the House stood to read out the stories silenced by legal threats: victims of Mohamed Al-Fayed who dared not name their abuser before his death; outlets threatened for exposing the Post Office scandal years before it erupted into public consciousness; reporters following leads about sexual abuse, stopped before they could even draft a story.

But when Rachel Gilmour stood, draped in a fur stole, to read one story in particular, a shiver ran through the TBIJ office. She began to read the story of Carrie Jones, an ordinary woman whom TBIJ interviewed many months earlier about her experience of defamation lawyers.

Jones might well have lived her entire life without ever encountering a libel lawyer. She isn’t a journalist. Nor is she wealthy or well-connected. But in 2019, her brother Danny Butcher, an army reservist, died by suicide.

Butcher paid to attend a controversial “wealth creation” course run by Samuel Leeds, a “wealth creator” whose courses promised “financial freedom” through property investments, Gilmour said. He attempted to secure a refund before he took his own life. Jones freely admitted her brother had problems – his mental health was suffering, and he was in debt before joining the course – but she couldn’t shake questions around the months leading up to his death.

Jones was concerned: Leeds’ courses are still running, but she couldn’t find any regulator or government body to which she could complain. Others who had joined Leeds’ courses had serious complaints too. Unwilling to stay silent, she gave interviews to journalists and appeared on YouTube channels to ask the questions publicly that, she felt, Leeds had failed to answer in private.

Jones received a solicitor’s letter warning that, if she continued, she could face legal action, Gilmour said. Jones wasn’t alone. Others had also received legal letters for speaking out about Leeds. But Jones had no lawyers to write back, no friends in the media to stay on her story. But here, after years of seeking answers, she saw that somebody in power cared.

Nothing will ever bring back Jones’s brother, but there in that moment, her story had been recognised. A spokesperson for Samuel Leeds told TBIJ that Butcher’s death was a “tragedy” but that our report was one-sided. They said: “Our business and founder were subjected to a campaign of abuse and sustained attacks, including unwarranted defamatory and even obscene and deeply personal publications.” Gilmour reflected some of their response in her speech, which is the fair thing to do.

Jones’s questions – far from being silenced – are now on the parliamentary record forever.

Victories aren’t easy to come by in investigative reporting. Stories can vanish without a ripple. But proving to someone that their grief wasn’t in vain felt important. The months of work had been worth it and Jones’s tenacity had, in some small way, paid off. ‘What a brave woman,’ Gilmour said.”

That’s it for this week! But if you’re in the mood for more, why not read about how the reporting of TBIJ’s tech team has led to a £2bn legal case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over fueling ethnic violence in Ethiopia. Just last week the case overcame a big legal hurdle – I’ll be paying close attention as it continues. 

I like my readers like I like my journalists – unsilenced! So do get in touch if there are things you want to hear about. It’s always lovely to hear from you.

Take care,