Mexico’s journalists have long faced bullets. Now lawsuits against them are rising

CAMPECHE, Mexico (AP) — Politicians and judges are increasingly attempting to shut down press freedoms in Mexico, raising concerns among journalism watchdog groups.

In 2025, a new lawsuit against journalists or media outlets was filed every six days in Mexico, 69 cases in total, according to Article 19, a press freedom watchdog, triple the previous year.

Politicians have discovered that lawsuits are “a much more effective way to silence the press because they give the impression of legality,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Tribuna, a 50-year-old daily newspaper in the southeastern state of Campeche, became the flagship media outlet during the administrations of the Institutional Revolutionary Party which governed the state for nearly a century.

Then Layda Sansores, of the ruling Morena party, won the 2021 gubernatorial election. And things quickly changed.

She pulled government advertising from Tribuna — advertising that was necessary for the paper to continue to publish. She started her own television program promoting her administration and demeaning journalists, handing out Oscar-style awards — called the “Golden Pinocchio” — to journalists she deemed the biggest “liars.”

Tribuna ran columns railing against her, and those columns sometimes went beyond her politics. Criticism intensified with gender-specific and homophobic attacks. Then in 2024, Tribuna, starved of revenue, ceased to print though it continued to publish online, including scathing articles against Sansores.

Sansores responded with several civil and criminal complaints against Jorge Luis González, who served as its editor for three decades and continues as a contributor, alleging moral damage, gender-based political violence and hate speech.

In mid-2025, one of Sansores' criminal cases against González led judges to bar him from journalism for two years and to have a judicial censor review Tribuna articles before online publication. Press freedom watchdogs strongly denounced the decision, arguing that prior censorship is unacceptable and concerned the decision might set a precedent.

González said he immediately appealed the measures and a judge temporarily suspended them pending a final ruling of the case.

Sansores has denied persecuting or censoring the press and says her lawsuits are to protect women. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Several local reporters say she also changed the way authorities try to control the press. Campeche officials now “stop you with lawsuits,” said Ronny Aguilar, a local journalist and digital content creator.

Reporters Without Borders has denounced the growing and widespread use of laws as weapons against the press, especially in the Americas.

U.S. President Donald Trump has banned three news outlets’ reporters from the White House, escalating his efforts — in the courts and through administrative action. The Associated Press also is suing following the president’s decision last year to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters.

In Mexico, the weaponization of the judicial system comes amid an increase in journalist killings. Seven journalists were killed this year, five of them in less than three months, one of the deadliest spikes in over a decade, according to CPJ.

Some of those targeted with lawsuits, including Veracruz crime reporter Rafael León, acknowledge that the experience has changed how they work. Although terrorism charges against León were dropped after President Claudia Sheinbaum intervened, he now reports less and works in fear, he said.

Sheinbaum has softened the hostile tone her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador , used toward some journalists, but a new federal regulation to protect “audiences' rights” set to take effect this month has alarmed press watchdogs.

The president insists it will better protect the public’s right to complain about any publication without leading to censorship. Some groups fear it could allow the state to intervene in some disputes ahead of Mexico’s 2027 elections.

Leopoldo Maldonado, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, warned that although governments may have legitimate reasons to combat disinformation or hate speech, laws that turn the state and judges into arbiters of the truth “generally end very badly.”

Among other problems, he said, such laws often rely on vague concepts that should not be addressed through criminal law.

Legislation targeting fake news has proved problematic in Turkey , Malaysia and Singapore , Maldonado said. Counterterrorism laws in Africa’s Sahel region “are used against the political opposition” and journalists covering armed conflicts there. Citing the example of Russia, he warned that the use of the term “foreign agents” to restrict journalism is spreading across the Americas.

Many government officials fuel hate campaigns and there is a need to regulate the excessive power of digital platform owners and give civil society a greater voice in that process, Maldonado said.

In Campeche, the state Human Rights Commission and activists are promoting legislation to protect human rights defenders and journalists.

Meanwhile, in the building that once housed the Tribuna newsroom, boxed-up computers sit waiting to be sold, offices stay empty and printing presses stand idle. Only a TV studio is still active.

González's shooting of his weekly political commentary video show continues. And so do the lawsuits from government officials against journalists.

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