VERACRUZ — When Mexican student Carlos David Chavez told his father he wanted to be a journalist, the reaction was dramatic: “They’re going to murder you!” he said.
It is an understandable response, AFP reports.
Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with more than 100 murdered since 2006.
The most recent killing was Tuesday, when a small-town investigative reporter named Candido Rios was gunned down with two other victims in the violent state of Veracruz.
The eastern state, which has a nasty history of drug cartel wars and corrupt politics, is the deadliest for journalists: at least 20 have been murdered here since 2010.
AFP
Asking questions about multi-billion-dollar mafias or government graft can be a deadly job in Mexico.
That, together with salaries as low as $300 a month and scarce job opportunities, has made journalism an unpopular career.
“The appetite to be a real reporter, the kind that goes into the field to chase down information, has diminished enormously. Especially for crime reporting,” said Marco Malpica, head of the communications department at Veracruz University.
Just 20 percent of his 200 students want to be actual journalists.
“And most of those want to cover sports or finance or be TV anchors,” he said.
The university’s 63-year-old journalism school has the oldest public program in Mexico, and has seen applications fall by 35 percent in the past five years.
The country’s premier private journalism school, Carlos Septien Garcia, in Mexico City, has seen enrolment drop by nearly 32 percent in the past decade.
It is the same trend at Latin America’s largest university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“Young people are going more for marketing, production and television directing. They want to be on TV,” said Victor Manuel Juarez, spokesman for the university’s department of political and social sciences.
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