Friday, 10/26, 6:40pm (Session XXVI)

Director/Producer: Bernardo Ruiz 

Description: 

Reportero follows veteran reporter Sergio Haro and his colleagues at ZETA, a Tijuana, Mexico-based muckraking weekly, as they stubbornly ply their trade in what has become one of the most deadly places in the world to work as a journalist. Since the ZETA's founding in 1980, three of the paper’s staffers have been murdered and the founder viciously attacked. In the case of former editor, Francisco Ortiz, he was gunned down just after buckling his two children into the back seat of his car. Ortiz was murdered for printing the names and faces of drug traffickers accustomed to operating with impunity and anonymity. “Impunity reigns in Mexico, especially here along the northern border,” explains Adela Navarro, Sergio’s boss and Zeta’s co-director. “With guns and money, drug traffickers have control over police, judges, prosecutors, and entire towns. This makes investigative journalism extraordinarily difficult.” Yet, Semanario Zeta, a weekly with a print circulation of nearly 30,000 is an anomaly.  For three decades, the paper has aggressively chronicled the activities of organized crime figures and crooked politicians. After nearly twenty-five years of reporting, the death of three of his colleagues and threats against his own life, Sergio has every reason to walk away from this line of work. Instead, he writes every week for ZETA, telling the stories of the residents of northern Mexico during a wave of unprecedented violence in his country.  

Biography: 

Bernardo Ruiz is the director/producer of American Experience: Roberto Clemente, winner of the ALMA Award for Outstanding Made for Television Documentary. He is the co-producer of The Sixth Section, winner of the top short documentary prize at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. He has directed programs for PBS, MTV, the Discovery Networks, Travel Channel, Planet Green and the National Geographic Channel. In 2007, he founded Quiet Pictures in order to produce aesthetically innovative and socially relevant documentary films for all platforms.

Contact Information:

E-mail: bernardoruiz@quietpictures.com
Web site: www.reporteroproject.com/index.php