Drug Trafficking and Propaganda: The Image of Drug Trafficking in the Mexican Press 2006-2010

The aim of this study is to identify and analyze the pattern of visibility of the main actors in the photographic coverage of drug trafficking in six of Mexico’s national newspapers. The study was based on a sample of 12,962,000 photographs published from 2006 to 2010. The images were processed by generating a codebook of key categories extracted from the informational context of drug trafficking and the war against drug trafficking. The technique used to explain the newspapers’ photographic coverage was the content analysis proposed by Johan Galtung in 1965, in its updated version of 2006. The limitations of the research are time constraints (only four years of President Felipe Calderón’s six-year term were analyzed) and information platforms (with the omission of online newspapers, supplements, and additional publications). The study offers an original analysis of the photographic coverage of drug trafficking in the Mexican press. The use of the Galtung Model reveals strong biases and imbalances in the coverage, with a clear tendency to defend the government’s position in the analyzed sample.