Mexican magazine founder Alfredo Cardoso died Sunday after being shot five times, the Guerrero state governor said, the second journalist to be killed in the country in a week.
Cardoso was kidnapped last week by hooded men who broke into his home, rights watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) has said.
Local media then reported he was found the next day shot inside his vehicle. He was immediately hospitalized.
“I wish to express my condolences to the family of journalist Alfredo Cardoso Echeverria, founder of the digital media Las Dos Costas, for their lamentable loss,” Guerrero state leader Evelyn Salgado wrote on social media.
Salgado condemned Cardoso’s murder and said she had instructed the state government secretariat to look after his family through a local initiative set up to protect human rights defenders and journalists.
“I have asked the State Attorney General’s Office to follow up on the investigations into this incident,” she said.
Cardoso’s death came just days after the killing of veteran journalist Fredy Lopez Arevalo in the southern state of Chiapas.
RSF regularly ranks Mexico alongside war-torn Syria and Afghanistan as the world’s most dangerous countries for news media.
At least nine journalists have been murdered in Mexico since the start of 2021, local media reported, up from eight journalists last year, although it is unclear if all the killings were linked to their work.
More than 100 reporters have been murdered since 2000 in the country and only a fraction of the crimes have resulted in convictions.
