Documentary Follows a Veteran Reporter and Colleagues at ZETA, A Tijuana-Based Independent Newsweekly as They Risk Their Lives
Bernardo Ruiz, Filmmaker
Reportero follows a veteran reporter and his colleagues at ZETA, a Tijuana-based independent newsweekly, as they stubbornly ply their trade in one of the deadliest places in the world for members of the media. In Mexico, more than 50 journalists have been slain or have vanished since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón came to power and launched a government offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels and organized crime. As the drug war intensifies and the risks to journalists become greater, will the free press be silenced?
In 1980, Jesús Blancornelas and Héctor Félix Miranda founded the Mexican newsweekly ZETA. They intended it to stand as an independent voice, different from the rest of the nation’s largely government-controlled media. At the time, reporting the truth about the country’s leaders was unprecedented — and risky. To secure the fledgling Tijuana paper’s survival, Blancornelas and Miranda located its printing operation across the border in California. The paper’s uncompromising stand against corruption (which included poking fun at those who practiced it) would bring it 30,000 readers — and anger from the country’s leadership.
Though Blancornelas was aware that they were making enemies, Miranda’s 1988 murder shocked him and the rest of the country. And the dangers ZETA’s staff would face were only beginning. Committed to investigative journalism, the muckraking weekly began reporting on Mexico’s deadly drug cartels and the public officials secretly working for them. The ZETA staff’s brave stance — and that of like-minded journalists throughout Mexico — has since cost dozens of lives, making the neighbor to the south of the United States one of the world’s most dangerous nations for reporters. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that more than 50 journalists were murdered or disappeared during the portion of Felipe Calderón’s tenure as president from December 2006 to the close of 2011.