Agentes, no víctimas. Estrategias de periodistas para evadir las agresiones no físicas en Baja California

Abstract

En. The nuances and consequences of the structural precariousness of Mexican journalism vary with the region. Attacks on journalists by power groups (in- cluding public officials, politicians, and business and media owners) in the northwest of the country appear to be one of the many problems linked to its economic, socio-cultural and political instability. In Baja California, journalists practice their profession under constant threat of economic, ethical and psychological attack, obliging them to regard the phenomenon in one of two ways: as a naturalized aspect of their profession and there- fore inherent to it; or as a trigger for creating strategies to circumvent it, including adapting aspects of their professional journalistic lives. The topic is relevant because the classifica- tion and differentiation of attacks has not been explored by Mexican studies on the press and power, apart from identifying and defining the structural violence and investigating physical attacks against journalists (murders, assaults and “express kidnappings”). By way of a four-month ethnographic study of the union of journalists from the five municipalities of Baja California and 25 interviews with journalists, editors, heads of information, public officials, politicians and business owners, this paper analyzes the strategies employed by print journalists to cope with abuses. Having another job concurrently (within or without journalism); publicly proving who is trying to influence them; and maintaining union and solidarity among colleagues when publishing sensitive news are all strategies employed to counter attacks. In this journalistic world, those who employ these strategies become agents and not victims of the structural precariousness that has developed in Baja California over the better part of a century.