This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A Mexican journalist was killed while driving through a violent border city on Saturday, becoming the latest victim of unabated attacks on the press that are leaving conflict-hit corners of the country without critical coverage.

Carlos Domínguez, 77, was attacked on Saturday afternoon in Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, where he worked as an independent reporter and wrote columns for publications in Tamaulipas state.

Mexico maelstrom: how the drug violence got so bad Read more

State officials said they were trying to determine if Domínguez’s work was a motive for his murder, the Associated Press reported.

As an 11-year crackdown on drug cartels dragged on with scant signs of success, Mexico registered record homicide rates in 2017.

At least 10 journalists were murdered in the country last year, including several who covered drug cartels and accusations of collusion between kingpins and public officials.

Tamaulipas state, in the north-east corner of the country, has turned especially violent in the last decade, around a split between the Gulf cartel and its one-time ally Los Zetas.

Both cartels have split again as leaders have been captured or killed, leaving underlings to fight over criminal empires and carry out crimes against citizens such as kidnap, extortion and carjacking.

The violence has affected the press in Tamaulipas, where publications frequently forgo covering crime in order to protect their staff. Cartels have at times dictated coverage.

Social media has filled some of the void: Twitter lights up with warnings during shootouts.

Article 19, a freedom of expression advocacy organisation, counts 14 journalists murdered in Tamaulipas since 2000.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has described states such as Tamaulipas as “silence zones”, where local media keep crime coverage vague, often omitting names and detailed descriptions if any reporting is done at all.

“Tamaulipas is a well-known silence zone, perhaps the most notorious one in Mexico,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ representative in Mexico.

“It has such a high degree of violent crime and organised crime activity that journalists there feel obligated to abide by certain rules imposed on them by organised crime, as to what they can write about and what they can’t write about.”