Media Owner Killed in Southeast Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Moises Dagdug, a media owner, journalist and former federal lawmaker, was stabbed to death at his home in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco in a suspected robbery, according to one of his associates, who told EFE that Dagdug had received threats.

The homicide occurred early Saturday at the 65-year-old Dagdug’s home in Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, with the assailants making off with the victim’s vehicle after killing him.

Dagdug was the owner of a radio station and a television news channel in Tabasco that was part of the Grupo VX media group, according to local media. He also hosted a show on that same radio station, XEVX La Grande de Tabasco, in which he was very critical of the current state governor, Arturo Nuñez Jimenez.

“The editorial line of Grupo VX ... was certainly critical, questioning the government’s bad actions,” the group’s news director, Angel Antonio Jimenez, told EFE.

He recalled that Dagdug had received threats and indeed had publicly denounced them on his show, titled “De frente Tabasco,” adding that Tabasco was suffering “a public safety crisis.”

“He wasn’t afraid to say that he’d been threatened, that he was receiving constant threats. In fact, the criminals had entered his private home on a couple of occasions. He changed his security system, and indeed his lifestyle had changed dramatically,” the news director said.

Dagdug represented Tabasco in the national legislature between 2006 and 2009 as a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for the practice of journalism, with more than 100 members of the media having been killed since 2000, according to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression.