Mexico sees surge in journalist killings, harassment, and disappearances

Mexico’s press-freedom crisis widened sharply in 2025, with eight journalists disappearing or being killed, 53 physical attacks on reporters and 153 cases of judicial harassment, a pattern that shows how violence and abuse of public power now work together to silence the press. The killings were concentrated in Durango, the State of Mexico, Guanajuato, Guerrero and Sonora, states where criminal networks and weak accountability have left reporters exposed.

The scale of the failure is measured not only in the 2025 toll, but in the long record behind it. Article 19 says it has documented 176 journalist killings in Mexico since 2000 in possible relation to their work. It also says 97.9% of crimes against the press have gone unpunished, a statistic that helps explain why murders, disappearances and intimidation keep recurring with little visible deterrent effect. In 2022, the group recorded 696 attacks against the press, its worst year on record, and 12 journalists were murdered that year.

The new tally came after a deadly run under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which Article 19 said violence against journalists rose 85% and 37 journalists were killed. The first full-year assessment under Claudia Sheinbaum has now arrived with no immediate response from her government, and the numbers suggest the problem remains structural rather than episodic. The organization said Mexico again led Latin America in censorship and judicial harassment of media workers, and nearly one in three alleged aggressors named by victims or families were public officials.

That is what makes the crisis a governance failure, not just a crime story. When public authorities are among the alleged aggressors, and when legal harassment has become the second most common tool used against journalists, the pressure reaches far beyond the newsroom. Local corruption reporting, cartel coverage and investigations into official complicity become riskier, and the result is a narrower public record of what is happening in some of Mexico’s most dangerous places.

The danger is also regional. The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least six journalists were killed in Mexico in 2024, Human Rights Watch said Mexico remained one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the press in 2026, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said at least eight journalists and media workers had been killed in the Americas since January 2026, including two in Mexico. Leopoldo Maldonado of Article 19 warned that society must not accept the idea that asking questions can cost a reporter their life, a warning that now hangs over Mexico’s democracy and its ties with the United States.