Narco News

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Narco News is an online newspaper dedicated to covering the United States' “war on drugs” and movements opposing that country's operations in Latin America. Its articles are available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with translations into Italian, French and German as well.

The founder and editor of Narco News is the American journalist Al Giordano. The web magazine currently has correspondents in Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and other Latin American countries.

In 2000, Giordano and Narco News were the subject of a libel suit filed by Banamex, Mexico's second-largest bank (now owned by Citigroup), for a series he wrote in asserting that the bank's president, Roberto Hernández, was involved with drug trafficking and money laundering.[1] The New York Supreme Court dismissed the suit December 5, 2001. The judge determined the Internet news sites were entitled to all the First Amendment protections accorded a newspaper, magazine or journalist, thereby extending the protections of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) to all internet journalists.

Narco News was the first publication to investigate the "House of Death" murders in 2005 indicating that U.S. officials had forehand knowledge of planned murders but failed to intervene. Subsequently the investigative journalist Bill Conroy received intimidating visits at his office, his home, and a visit to his employer from officers of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an event that prompted a letter by Congresswom an Cynthia McKinney reprimanding United States Attorney Johnny Sutton for "an attempt ... to intimidate a journalist who has reported facts that are embarrassing to him".[2]

In January 2006, Narco News began revealing government documents it had obtained that suggested agents with the DEA office in Bogotá, Colombia, were collaborating with or protecting high-level narco-traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries. The documents also suggested that officials at high levels of DEA and the Justice Department were aware of these accusations and actively involved in covering the case up.

Since December 2005, Narco News has embarked on an ambitious project called "The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign." A group of journalists began covering the Other Campaign (a new program launched by the rebel indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation to create a unified Left "from below" that could challenge the Mexican state outside the electoral system, which they perceive as hopelessly corrupt) in its initial phases, a tour through every Mexican state. This project has included coverage of the grassroots movement against fraud in the 2006 Mexican general election and the teacher-led popular uprising in the state of Oaxaca.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Drug War on Trial: Narco-Bankers Sue the Free Press.
  2. ^ Letter of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

[edit] External links