This clip from popular Mexican news anchor Carlos Loret de Mola is getting some play in Mexico, with lots of YouTube hits and over 400 comments on Blog del Narco. (Sorry, no subtitles.)

Slog tipper K, who's currently living in Mexico City, writes:

Have you seen this clip? It's pretty popular in Mexico. Carlos Loret is a nationally famous news anchor, which maybe buys him some protection from narcos. Basically, this video talks about one day with kidnapping, gun battles, military curfews, and the effects of people and leaving en masse from Tampico. It's popular because it's unusual for journalists to talk about this, which he says at the end of the clip.

In an email last month, K wrote about the effects of narco-censorship on everyday talk about the drug war—surprise, surprise, when the papers refuse to seriously report on the problem, it kills the public discourse about it:

It's interesting to compare the coverage of the drug war here and in the US. Here, there's stories about arrests and killings, but no investigative pieces about politicians or narcos. One of the most popular tabloids, El Grafico, runs daily front page pictures of decapitated heads and dismembered bodies that have been found around the country. But people rarely discuss the drug war. I would compare it to how often people in the US discuss the war in Afghanistan, but it's right here. I mean, for example, some of my students (like the grandchildren of Carlos Slim and Vincente Fox) are delivered and retrieved from school in essentially an armored vehicle, but it's like pulling teeth for them to identify the drug war as an issue currently facing their country.

One of the YouTube comments on the clip rewrites the history of Mexico:

*1810 — INDEPENDECIA

*1910 — REVOLUCIÓN

*2010— LA GUERRA CONTRA EL NARCO

Meanwhile, the office of drug czar Gil Kerlikowske is issuing misleading, scare-tactic press releases about kids smoking grass that seem suspiciously timed to the pro-pot initiative in California.

Why would you do something like that, Gil? Even former Mexican president Vicente Fox thinks legalization is a good idea. If you're not going to support the sensible solution you could at least refrain from spreading counter-productive disinformation...