Azucena Uresti is a Mexican newsreader, famous for her unabashed coverage of cartel violence. She was the target of a warning video published by a local cartel: ‘don’t be so brave because if you keep on confronting me, I assure you that wherever you are, I’ll find you’, says the central figure, surrounded by masked men carrying guns. Activist groups are using deepfake videos of murdered journalists to encourage the country’s president to do more to protect the media. ‘I was murdered by someone who didn’t like what I published’, a haunting reanimation of Javier Valdez says in one such video. He was murdered for making fun of the Sinoloan cartel in a newspaper in Culiacán. ‘One cartel will reach out to a reporter and have them write about another to blame them for something. The thing is you can’t choose to be at peace with both sides and one or another will consider you an enemy’, says Ernesto Martinez, a reporter. He was caught up in the violence after the arrest of drug lord El Chapo’s son Ovidio in 2019, which caused a battle between armed cartel members and the police. Ernesto won an Emmy for his contribution to a documentary about the violence, risking his life to film it.