One of Mexico’s best-known journalists said Friday that two gunmen on a motorcycle tried to kill him on a Mexico City street last night.
Radio and television reporter Ciro Gomez Leyva posted a description of the attack and photos of his shot-up vehicle on social media.
He recounted that the attack occurred shortly before midnight on a street near his home and that he was saved because his truck is armored.
“At 11:10 pm, 200 meters from my house, two people on a motorcycle shot at me, apparently with the clear intention of killing me,” Gomez Leyva tweeted. Photos showed that at least two bullets hit the driver’s side window.
The Mexico City Attorney’s Office reported that it has already opened an investigation.
This year has been one of the deadliest for Mexican media workers, with 15 deaths so far. But the killings and almost all the attacks have targeted journalists in provincial cities.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who often verbally argues with Gomez Leyva, condemned the attack.
“He is a journalist, a human being, but he is also a leader of public opinion, and damage to a personality like Ciro generates a lot of political instability,” Lopez Obrador said.
“We have differences, they are notorious, they are in the public domain, we will continue to have them, but it is completely reprehensible that an attempt is made against the life of any person,” added the president.
On his popular morning radio show, Gomez Leyva said of the president: “I have no differences with him. We do our journalistic work.”
Lopez Obrador frequently uses his daily two-hour morning press conferences to accuse Gomez Leyva, and other well-known journalists who criticize him, of being part of a conservative conspiracy against his government.
The president has frequently verbally attacked journalists, accusing them of “sellouts,” “mercenaries,” and “thugs.” Press groups say the president’s hostile comments have contributed to making journalists less safe in Mexico.
2022 has been one of the worst years for journalists in Mexico, which is now considered the most dangerous country for reporters outside of a war zone.
While organized crime is often involved in the murders of journalists, politically or criminally motivated officials in small towns are also often suspected. Journalists who run small media outlets in the interior of Mexico are easy targets.
Source: El Nuevo Herald
