The owner of a Mexican newspaper in this violent border town said Tuesday there will be no more investigative coverage of drug gangs, a day after the paper’s offices were sprayed with bullets and a reporter hospitalized with five gunshots.
Under the new policy, El Manana will only report the basic facts of drug-related killings and will avoid mentioning names or doing any follow-up reporting.
“Zero investigations into the narco,” the paper’s owner, Ramon Cantu, said Tuesday while more than 50 state and federal police guarded his offices. The wounded reporter, Jaime Orozco Tey, remained hospitalized Tuesday in serious condition.
President Vicente Fox said federal agents would take over the case.
“I say again to organized crime: You will not make the Mexican people yield,” Fox told reporters in the Pacific state of Sinaloa.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City condemned the attack.
So far this year, almost a person a day has been killed in Nuevo Laredo, a city of 300,000 across the river from Laredo, Texas. Investigators say most of the killings are related to a battle between Mexico’s top drug cartels fighting for control of its billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States.
In the attack Monday, the gunmen began shooting in the reception area, and employees ran for cover in the printing area. The floor of the reception area was littered with empty shell casings.
In January, two reporters with El Manana were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival gangs, although neither was injured. Last April, a radio crime reporter was fatally shot in Nuevo Laredo.