Still Dreaming of Democracy: Why Journalists in Mexico are Being Harassed, Threatened and Killed

The Independence(s) Lecture Series

Still Dreaming of Democracy:Why Journalists in Mexico are Being Harassed, Threatened and Killed

Dr. Sallie Hughes
University of Miami

Academics have a way of discarding value-laden arguments, especially when it comes to the unfilled promises bundled up in democracy or the motivations that drive journalists to do their jobs. While that skepticism is well-placed when one is designing an academic study, Hughes argues we shouldn’t discard the desire for democracy as an explanation for journalists’ behavior - or why they are threatened and killed. Using evidence from a first-ever national survey of journalists in Mexico, and years of ethnographic work in Mexican newsrooms, she shows that the democratic norms that drive journalists to be muckrakers or change agents are a risk factor as strong as covering dangerous newsbeats or working in an extremely violent context. 

Sallie Hughes is an Associate Professor at The University of Miami in the Department of Journalism and Media Management, and the Faculty Director of the University of Miami Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas, which is the university’s cross-university research institute on Latin America, the Caribbean and the diasporic communities of those regions. Her research primarily focuses on journalism and society in Latin America, particularly Mexico, and in recent years the enormous physical and psychological risk to journalists in Latin America and elsewhere in the Global South. Before earning her PhD, she was a journalist in Mexico and in the general market and Latino-oriented media of the United States