Looking for a job in the narco?

By Ivabelle Arroyo

"Is it true that the narco is the fifth largest employer in the country?" a friend of mine asks me and it makes my hair stand on end. I realize, with her concern, the tremendous irresponsibility in which we in the media incur, that world to which I am honored to belong but which needs to be polished all the time.

El Universal, La Crónica, El País, Aristegui Noticias, El Financiero, Excélsior and Reforma are some of the most important and normally rigorous newspapers that fell into the irresponsibility of using the employer's angle when recording the results of an investigation published in the journal Science which, by the way, is titled: "Reducing recruitment is the only way to solve violence in Mexico".

Some smarty pants found it more attractive to headline the story as "The narco is the fifth largest employer in the country" and everyone else considered it a newspaper-selling stroke of genius.