Mexican Prisoners hired as Killers

      In Mexico, prisoners are being hired to become hit men. They are able to leave the vicinity armed with official weapons and vehicles in order to carry out their execution. This execution is a drug-related killing. These prisoners go to these different drug gangs and execute their plans by killing them. However, due to their criminal record and status of being a prisoner, these prisoners have also killed a number of innocent people. There were many bullet casings found at killing scenes of innocent people that belonged to the weapons used by the inmates.

      

      According to the New York Times article, there was brief information about the prisoners becoming hit men. The article was quite short and only supplies information of the number of people killed by the hit men, the targeted rivals and some innocent people. The way New York Times articles are written are easier to understand and to catch up on due to the layout. Nearly every sentence or statement has its own paragraph. This allows the readers to read the article at ease without having to lose their place. They can find where they left of by looking through the divided spaces of the article. As for the article itself, there are no pictures indicating the event. There are limited sources and interviews of other witnesses about the occurrence. There is no slant in the article. The article just briefly states what happened without putting any emotions into it. I felt like I was reading the article without being able to connect with it emotionally.

      

      The USA Today article regarding the Mexican prisoners gave a lot more detail than New York Times. The article supplied witnesses, names, places, statistics, etc so that the readers know exactly what was happening and where. The layout of the article was similar to New York Times. They have space breaks in between each sentence allowing the audience to read at ease without having to strain their eyes after each passing sentence. The break allows them to go back to the place they left off if they were to ever lose their place. This USA Today article gave a lot of information about the event and also provided a lot of background information about the people related to the event. However, towards the end of the article, there seemed to be a lot of random information thrown out to the audience. “Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a half-kilogram (pound) of cocaine and two guns.
His arrest led to a raid on a safe house where authorities detained four suspects and freed a kidnap victim.
Also Sunday, the military reported two marines were injured in a clash with gunmen Wednesday in the border state of Tamaulipas. Their wounds were not life-threatening” (Jones). The article talks about the arrest of Vazquez Barragan and then at the end it spoke about a shooting and who was injured. This article, like the New York Times, had no pictures and just the article itself which contained a lot of details and hardly any slant.

       BBC News talks about the “Contract Killings” in this short article about the Mexican prisoners. This article is shorter than the USA Today article and focuses more on random information. I feel that the information that they throw out needed to be elaborated more on. For an audience to read this article for the first time, and not understand the details behind them from reading related articles, would not know what they are talking about and who these people are that they speak of. One good thing about this article is that they put a picture of the scene where the shooting was taken place. The visual affect allowed the audience to emotionally relate with the article. Another good thing about this article was the links on the side where they linked related stories to this article. Instead of putting the details and information in this article altogether, there are separate articles in relation to this one that talks about the Mexico Drug War that has been going on for quite a while.

      As for CNN and ABC News, the articles are fairly short and repetitive in relation to the other articles. CNN posted the same picture as BBC News in their article and ABC did not post any pictures at all. Nearly all of these articles use only one source and interviewee. They interview Ricardo Najera, the spokesman for the federal prosecutors' office who talks about the prisoner’s ability to leave the vicinity to carry out their executions. The statistics are all the same along with many of the sources and details.

Work Cited:
Malkin, Elisabeth."Mexican Officials Say Prisoners Acted as Hit Men." New York Times. 25. July 2010. 
  
Jones, Brent. "Mexico: Guards Armed, Freed Inmates to Kill 17 People." USA Today. 25. July 2010 .


"Mexico Prisoners 'Freed for Killings' in Durango State." 25. July 2010. .


CNN Wire Staff. "Mexican Officials" Prison Inmates Released to Commit Killings." 25. July 2010 .

Campbell, Robert and Eric Walsh. "Hitmen Behind Mexico Massacre Were Prisoners: Government." 25. July 2010 .