Another journalist slain in Mexico -- the 4th this month

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An online news outlet in Mexico said Monday that one of its reporters was shot to death, the fourth journalist to be killed in the country in less than a month.

Armando Linares, director of the local website Monitor Michoacán, said three assailants fatally shot reporter Roberto Toledo in the city of Zitacuaro. Prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan said they were investigating the report.

Linares said the website had received threats for reporting on governmental corruption.

“For exposing corrupt administrations and corrupt officials and politicians, today that led to to death of one of our colleagues,” said Linares. “There people came up to him and shot him.”

“The Monitor Michoacán team has suffered weeks, months of death threats. We know where all of this comes from,” Linares added, though he did not identify those he thought responsible.

The unprecedented spate of killings has put reporters on edge across Mexico, and sparked protests earlier this month. The government says over 50 journalists have been slain in Mexico since December 2018.

In the border city of Tijuana, two journalists were killed in the space of a week. On Jan. 17, crime photographer Margarito Martínez was gunned down outside his home. On Jan. 23, reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was found shot to death inside her car.

Reporter José Luis Gamboa was killed in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz in an attack Jan. 10.

Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas said recently that more than 90% of murders of journalists and rights defenders remain unsolved, despite a government system meant to protect them.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists puts the percentage at 95%, said its Mexico representative, Jan-Albert Hootsen.