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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Bernardo Ruiz - Covering the Narco Wars

I'm in a session now listening to Bernardo Ruiz talk about his movie Reportero which blew me away at the Anchorage International Film Festival last December.  The movie followed the journalists covering the drug wars in Mexico and how doggedly they follow the drug wars risking their lives.




Reporters were getting killed - he mentioned about 50 murders.  His main subject, Sergio Hara, working for the paper Zeta, had received a death threat and sent his wife and child away, but kept reporting.  Other media stopped reporting on narcotics out of fear.  Yet this reporter keeps on his beat.   The film showed on PBS and you can read a longer description of it there. 

[UPDATE June 7, 2017:  San Diego Union-Tribune reported May 30, 2017 that Sergio Hara was found dead of a reported heart attack at age 60 in his home.]

Bernardo just said that he didn't mean this to sound like a memorial, because Sergio is still alive and well and reporting.   I've done a short video of the opening of this talk.  It should all be available as a podcast at UAA eventually.  But this will give you a clue.



)


[There's a second post with a short video answering my question about what viewers can do to help support Mexican journalists.]


 [UPDATE March 12, 2014: Viddler Video replaced with YouTube.]

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