You Can't Kill the Truth

Darren Phillips
Aug 2, 2018
1 min read

Updated: Nov 6

Pink sign with "No se mata la verdad asesinando periodistas" text, candle, framed photo, and cups on a table, evoking a somber mood. — A memorial to Mexican journalists who have died covering the scourge of female homicides in neighboring Ciudad Juárez appears in a cafe in El Paso, Texas, on June 4, 2018. (Photo by Darren Phillips)

I snapped this photo at the Cafe Mayapan in El Paso, Texas, earlier this summer while attending a multimedia workshop for journalism educators. Roughly translated, the sign reads: “You can’t kill the truth by killing journalists.”

The handwritten inscription was part of a memorial to Mexican journalists who have died covering the scourge of female homicides in neighboring Ciudad Juárez, a place once described as “a city where women are disposable.”

I thought it appropriate to post this today given we now live in a time when the sitting president of the United States routinely calls our free and independent press the “enemy of the people," at a time when citizens on the far right literally cheer when journalists are gunned down in cold blood, at a time when "doublethink" is now apparently en vogue, at a time when “lügenpresse” is the rallying cry of the people. ☮︎