Who is killing Guatemala's journalists?

John Otis looks into the cases of nine journalists killed so far this year in Guatemala for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In interviews with CPJ, reporters, editors, and press freedom activists listed numerous reasons for the uncertainty surrounding the killings.

For starters, journalists who face the biggest threats are usually part-time reporters based in small towns far from the capital, said Julia Cardona, an editor at the Guatemala City daily El Periodico. She said that the newspaper pays its correspondents about US$40 per story and that many take on second jobs to make ends meet.

When targeted journalists moonlight in public relations, commerce, city hall, and in other endeavors, however, it becomes harder for authorities to directly link their murders to their journalism, said Carlos Arrazola, editor of the news website Plaza Pública.

"It is very possible that some of these murders are due to common delinquency," Arrazola told CPJ. "Guatemala has an average of 15 murders per day. There is a culture of violence and a tolerance of violence. People get accustomed to it, which is why the murders of journalists don't receive much attention."

But there is the possibility that more sinister forces may be at work. For example, some of the killings recorded by CERIGUA have taken place in areas dominated by drug traffickers who want no scrutiny from journalists. In addition, allegedly corrupt local authorities in remote regions often have little tolerance for watchdog reporting and have been suspected of contracting hit men to go after journalists, Blanck said.

While Guatemala has experienced a significant decrease in its homicide rate and an improvement in its criminal justice system's investigative capacity, the great majority of crimes in Guatemala continue to go unsolved. That is the same for the nine journalists killed in 2016, triple the number killed in 2015. It's unclear whether any of them have been killed directly as a result of their work.

The attorney general's office established a group to handle threats and attacks against journalists, but the office is "understaffed and underfunded." Journalists are on their own.