Mexican Drug War Reporting: Hazardous to Press Freedom
Thousands more lives have been ruined by the drugs he has trafficked. The biggest portion reportedly has flowed through Chicago, where the 95-year-old nonprofit Chicago Crime Commission has named him their first Public Enemy No. 1 since Al Capone.
No wonder Penn, having interviewed Cuban President Raul Castro and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was eager to add Guzman to his collection of celebrity autocrat interviews.
The result is a remarkable piece of journalism in that Penn actually manages to make his subject, the world's most famous drug lord, sound boring. That's partly because Penn tells you a lot more about himself than about his subject.
Worse, he lobs softball questions that delicately avoid zeroing in on, say, drugs, murders, kidnappings, torture and other activities that make El Chapo a menace to society.
Sample: "Do you consider yourself a violent person?"
Answer: "No, sir."
That's it. Penn and Rolling Stone also agreed in advance to let Guzman see the story before it ran. That's a major taboo in fundamental journalism ethics. Journos sometimes will read someone's quotes back to them in order to check for accuracy, when time allows, but not the entire story.
Guzman didn't ask for changes. He apparently didn't have to. Maybe Penn decided to be super-nice because somebody told him how dangerous it can be to practice journalism in Mexico.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, on whose board I sit, has confirmed 32 journalists murdered in Mexico since 1992 when CPJ was founded. Three more were killed while on dangerous assignments. There are other journalist deaths that could not be confirmed as media work-related, especially when Mexican authorities tend to steer press freedom investigators away from that motive.
Many of those deaths, as well as beatings and other intimidation, have occurred in Sinaloa, Guzman's home state, where the prominent Noroeste newspaper blamed top state officials for more than 60 attacks on the paper since 2010.
If the presence of a famous Oscar-winning star like Penn can bring some attention to the hazards faced by real journalists in Mexico, his El Chapo adventure may do some good. Otherwise, he's like Guzman, just another guy who wants to be in movies.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
