The International Press Institute (IPI) is today publishing the speech given by Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui as she accepted the IPI-IMS World Press Freedom Hero award at IPI’s 2023 World Congress in Vienna on May 25, 2023. Leer el discuro en español.

Good evening.

Thank you to the members of the IPI/IMS jury for this important recognition, which allows us to celebrate today, together, press freedom, free expression, and the work of journalism worldwide.

Thank you, Carlos Dada, for your words and for the excellent work you do together with your team at El Faro, now outside of El Salvador but for El Salvador.

Congratulations on receiving this award in 2022 and for recognizing the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist killed in an Israeli army operation while she was reporting in the West Bank.

It’s an honor to be here to participate in the IPI World Congress 2023.

Greetings to everyone who participated in this open discussion on press freedom and media innovation in the age of AI.

Congratulations to the journalists and editors who have analyzed and debated at this World Congress about what’s happening at the global level and the enormous challenges that exist today for press freedom and the exercise of free and independent journalism.

The right word to start this message is: Thank you.

Thank you for making me part of this special ceremony, which honours journalists who have contributed and who contribute to the defense, promotion, and exercise of press freedom.

This award stimulates, nourishes, and recognizes the work of editors and journalists who decide to keep going despite adversity

I want to thank, from here, the entire team of which I am a part, for their professionalism, commitment, and courageous decision to stick with it and continue doing – despite the difficulties and these difficult times – free, critical, and independent journalism. Thank you to all of you. Thank you for your courage, commitment, and resilience. I share this award with our great team.

In the past few years, we’ve experienced together: censorship; judicial persecution; trespassing on the premises; surveillance using systems like Pegasus against us and our families, including my son Emilio, who was attacked dozens of times – like his mother, the journalist – with Pegasus malware, even when he was a student and a minor.

In addition to the typical attacks of authoritarian regimes against journalists, we must now add a certain type of attack promoted by democratically elected governments, as is the case of Mexico, where devious, direct attacks by politicians at the highest level – starting with the president – against the media and journalists are prevalent.

When a president, in an act of deliberate, political calculation, virulently attacks a journalist by first and last name, for saying or publishing something, he unleashes real hate and smear campaigns online.

What are these politicians and presidents across the world aiming at when they decide to systematically attack critics, the media, and journalists? When they don’t let a day pass without verbally attacking media and journalists by their first and last names?

Here, we know exactly what they’re aiming at.

They’re aiming to deliberately damage and – if possible – destroy those two fragile axes that sustain the work of the press and its relationship with the public: trust and credibility. Not a single day is allowed to pass without poison darts being launched from the presidency against those who investigate, report, or think differently.

Difficult times for journalism in countries like Mexico…

And so thank you again for this important honor. This award sustains us. This award stimulates us. This award pushes us to keep going.

I also know that the jury decided to give the 2023 World Press Freedom Hero award to a Mexican journalist because it wanted to “shine a light on the enormous pressure facing free and independent journalism in Mexico.”

We are a country with almost 127 million inhabitants; a middle-income economy with 43 billion dollars in exports; possessor of an immense multicultural wealth and many things for which we Mexicans feel proud. However, there exists, too, a troubling outlook in which we see that it’s possible to lose things that until recently, we thought we had won.

Today in Mexico, as in many other countries, we are witness to processes and realities in which rights, legality, democracy, and freedoms are still not guaranteed.

A country that, like others, still faces in much of its territory the challenge of structural violence, which affects the lives of millions

There is an official registry of more than 110,000 disappeared people and tens of thousands of people murdered in contexts of extreme violence, which the authorities have been recording over the years in figures that have become stratospheric.

More than 57,000 human bodies have accumulated without having been claimed or identified by anyone, while, paradoxically, thousands of people – mainly women – claw at the fields with their fingernails to find their sons, daughters, husbands, missing relatives.

Mexico is facing a massive forensic crisis in which it would take 120 years to identify the accumulated bodies, according to calculations by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.

Those of us here know very well that our societies have the right to know and be informed. But we also know that investigating, reporting, and doing journalism in contexts of corruption, organized crime, and extreme violence can mean death for a journalist.

Mexico has become, as I said, one of the most dangerous and most lethal countries in the world for those who practice journalism.

From 2000 to 2022, 157 killings of journalists and media workers were recorded in Mexico. Killings which, in almost all cases, have remained in impunity. Here in Vienna today, in this splendid place, we have to ask ourselves: What does a killed journalist mean for democracy? What do two mean? What do five mean? 20? 50? What do 100 mean? What do we do when a country has recorded 157 killings of journalists in recent years? What do we do when, according to UNESCO, 86 journalists and media workers were killed around the world in 2022 alone? One journalist killed every four days.

Killing a journalist means killing the public’s right to know and to be informed.

And if there are no consequences – which there aren’t – and if there is impunity – which there is – it’s an invitation to continue killing. It’s to continue allowing eyes, ears, and voices to be turned off. Voices that will no longer be there to bring us the news.

A few weeks ago, the organization Article 19 presented “Voices Against Indifference,” its annual report on Mexico.

In 2022, 696 attacks against the press were recorded in Mexico, which consolidated its position as the “most violent country for journalistic work”.

The attacks recorded include intimidation and harassment; threats; illegitimate use of public power; blocking or alteration of content; physical attack; deprivation of liberty; trespass; cyber attacks; disappearance; torture; illegal communications surveillance and the most serious of all: murder.

In 2022, 12 journalists were murdered in Mexico, most likely because of their work.

The report concludes that, last year, there was an attack on the Mexican press every 13 hours.

Globally, we know about the complex and challenging global landscape for the exercise of journalism. At this World Congress, the new challenges of artificial intelligence have been widely discussed, but I also ask that from this Congress a call be made to states about what is happening to many journalists who are currently being persecuted, attacked, killed, or imprisoned for doing their jobs.

I know that I will be unfair because of the impossible task of naming all those who today, in one way or another, are facing punishment, persecution, or judicial procedures, or who have been killed or doing their job.

From here, a message of encouragement and solidarity to:

IPI World Press Freedom Hero José Rubén Zamora. Who is today in a Guatemalan prison, facing a questionable legal process that clearly bears the signs of being a political prosecution. El Periódico, the publication that he founded and from which he has directed the most important journalistic investigations in Guatemala in recent years, had to close a few days ago, citing political persecution.

A message for Carlos Fernando Chamorro, for Sergio Ramírez, and for all those whom the Nicaraguan regime has imprisoned, persecuted, and declared traitors to the country. From here a message for all those who have been imprisoned, who have been accused of betraying the homeland in order to take away their heritage and nationality and expel them from Nicaragua.

Considered a symbol of press freedom, the founder of Apple Daily in Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, 75 years old, was arbitrarily detained and accused of endangering national security and other charges.

Reporters Without Borders together with editors and journalists from various parts of the world have spoken out to highlight his work in favor of pluralism and independent information and to demand his release.

To close, it is impossible not to mention the case of Julian Assange, the journalist – and it must be emphasized that he is a journalist – and founder of Wikileaks, who, as we all know, is today in a devastating process that could lead to his extradition to the United States facing charges for which he faces life in prison.

As jointly stated by The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, The Guardian, and El País: The accusations against Julian Assange set a dangerous precedent for press freedom.  Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information is a basic duty of journalists towards the public.

The Assange case represents a serious danger to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and, of course, to freedom of the press throughout the world.

These journalists – and to the many that I have not mentioned who have been censored, persecuted, imprisoned, killed, or attacked in different ways around the world – deserve the fullest recognition for courageously defending, even at the cost of their lives, press freedom.

From here, a hug for all of them.

Thank you and good night.