IN MEXICO, WHAT IS TRUTH, WHO’S REPORTING IT?

BY WENDY FRY & ALEXANDRA MENDOZA

When Marcos Ernesto Islas Flores was shot to death outside his father’s home in Tijuana last Sunday some initial reports indicated the victim was the fifth Mexican journalist to be murdered since the start of the year But the victim’s father offered an important distinction when confirming the killing in an interview, describing his son as working until recently as a “communicator. The difference is more than semantics. The rise of social media communicators in Mexico many of them focusing on lurid crimes often anonymously have blurred the lines about what qualifies as news reporting. But the people who run the sites say their rise is a response to the unrelenting drug violence that has stilled the voice of some mainstream media.

Islas Flores, 30 was fatally shot outside of the home of his father, Marco Antonio Islas Parra, who confirmed the killing in a chilling Facebook post. In an interview with Grupo REFORMA, the elder Islas Parra said his son worked as a communicator until a year and a half ago, when he stopped posting for personal reasons. The victim’s father is the director of Zona Norte Noticias, a Facebook page that shares news releases and articles. He previously worked as a reporter, beginning in 1990 for El Heraldo, El Sol de Tijuana and El Imparcial, according to Grupo REFORMA. According to a Facebook page titled Notiredesmx, the son had managed the page until late 2019 His last public Facebook post appears to show images of a woman locked in a dark cell with her children with no description or explanation. In Mexico underneath the “unrelenting spectacle of slaughter,” as Carnegie Mellon associate professor of history Paul K. Eiss describes it in an essay about the anonymous El Blog del Narco, there is a

MORRIS CASUTO

1942-2022

SAN