Prosecutors in the southern state of Guerrero said Monday that Fredid Roman was murdered in the state capital of Chilpancingo. Román’s program, The Reality of Guerrero, focused heavily on state-level politics. He also wrote a column. Guerrero is a state where drug gangs, armed vigilantes and other groups regularly clash. This was one of the deadliest ever for journalists in Mexico, which is now considered the most dangerous country for journalists outside of a war zone. Prosecutors did not immediately provide further details about the killing of Roman, who local media said had previously published a newspaper of the same name and was shot in his vehicle. The killing comes just a week after freelance journalist Juan Arjón López was found dead in the northern border state of Sonora. Prosecutors said he died of blunt force trauma to the head. His body was found in the San Luis Río Colorado, across the border from Yuma, Arizona. This area has been hit by drug cartel violence in recent years. In March, volunteer searchers found 11 bodies in hidden burial pits in a stretch of desert near a landfill in San Luis. In early August, a journalist was among four people killed inside a beer store in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Authorities said it is unknown if this attack was related to the journalist’s work, his role as a representative of local businesses in planning an upcoming exhibition or something else. While organized crime is often involved in murders of journalists, small-town officials or politicians with political or criminal motivations are also often suspects. Journalists who run small news agencies inside Mexico are often targeted. Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico’s representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote after Arjón López’s killing that “although some arrests have been made in previous cases of press killings this year, a continuing climate of impunity continues to fuel these attacks.” .
