Are Tabloids Profiting From Exploitation of Violence Against Women in Mexico?

(Photo : Reuters)

On newspapers and magazines throughout Mexico, lurid images of the deceased share the space in famous newspapers recognized as nota roja or "red news," with sports stars and sexy models.

Graphic crime newspapers from Mexico have long benefited from reporting brutality that exceeds records for each passing year since the beginning of the nation's "war on drugs." 

Critics say that the photograph of the newspapers without censorship and lewd articles twice make the murder victims and reinforce sexual violence. 

Yet tabloid journalists say their work tells readers of alarming bloodshed rates in a country that is inundated with crime.

Right after two famous tabloids had leaked the photos of Ingrid Escamilla's body in Mexico City, who was murdered, skinned and dismembered by her killer in February, the genre attracted criticism over the representation of the deceased and also in particular, of the victims of abuse by women.

On March 9 in answer to the rising gender-motivated assaults and as many women cry at an unresponsive government authorities, protesters in Mexico held a mass strike.

Women as well as little girls all over Mexico were asked to save their education, job, and all other things from home on "A Day Without Us."

Ten Mexican women are murdered each day by more than 8 in 2016. More than 90% of such incidents have never been resolved, as per the National Statistics Institute.

The campaign in Mexico for women's rights has reached a boiling point in the weeks after Escamilla's death. 

And this blaze was also followed by the brutal killing of the seven-year-old Fatima Aldriguetti Anton, from Southern Mexico, whose corpse was found in a plastic sack days after she became missing.

The dizzying rate of crime in the city has left no room for Mexico City's nota roja reporters to investigate the motives behind the murders. Most of the time, the deceased cannot be identified.

People marched through the streets calling for the government's action to combat the murdering of women because of their sexuality, a violence called femicide. 

"Complicit media" and "machista press" were the phrases that were sprayed in their slogans as protestants have shown their grievances towards the press outside of La Prensa's workplace.

The 91-year-old magazine, La Prensa, whose delivery truck had been put on fire by the protestors last month, right after Escamilla's body has been printed in the front page of their tabloid.

Feminist groups claim that they will not advocate for violence censorship but instead, they have said that they want the papers to be more open to gender-based abuse by using less clickbaiting headlines.

Maria Flores, a feminist from Crianza Feminista in the city, said women need a story that go far beyond morbidity.

Arianna Alfaro, a red-listed journalist at La Prensa, said that the nation, as well as those opposing domestic violence will never learn about all the grotesque atrocities they denounce without the exposure of Mexico's note roja.

In addition, several media experts believe that red papers are targeted at an audience of predominantly male. Headlines with graphic photographs also characterize murders as passionate killings.