The utterly important and dangerous job of going after the truth

Never has the media been under a bigger spotlight, and never has good journalism been more important than at this particular time.

From the US to Brazil, from the Maldives to Venezuela, the dogged and brave (and underpaid) work done by journalists pushes forward the cause of democracy.

The media determines what is relevant, what must be discussed, exposes the truth. We "journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses to history," wrote the British war correspondent Robert Frisk.

In the US, The New York Times recently brought to light what was said in a closed meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov. In Brazil last week, the newspaper O Globo published information about a leaked tape that could bring down the President, Michel Temer.

It is not easy to publish stories of this nature. Nor is it safe. In Latin America, journalism continues to be an extraordinarily dangerous job.

Last September, Chilean-born journalist Braulio Jatar was thrown in jail in Venezuela after he published video of residents jeering President Nicolás Maduro (he was released from prison and placed under house arrest on May 24). Cuba, which has the most restrictive laws on free speech and press freedom in the Americas, according to non-profit the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), imprisoned two journalists in 2016.

But even more shockingly, despite not being at war, Mexico today is the deadliest place on the globe to be a journalist. So far this year, 17 journalists have been murdered across the world (10 of these with confirmed motives), according to CPJ. Five of these murders took place in Mexico. Also this year, two journalists were killed in the Dominican Republic and one in Honduras.

The most shocking of these murders occurred on May 15, when prize-winning reporter Javier Valdez Cárdenas was pulled from his car in broad daylight in Culiacán, capital of Mexico's Sinaloa state and the center of its drug trade. He was shot a dozen times.

CPJ says that since 1992, some 40 journalists have been killed in Mexico because of their work, 32 of them with impunity. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has said he will replace the lead prosecutor responsible for investigating crimes against the freedom of expression, though similar changes in the past have done little to stop the bloodshed.

The traditional papers of the world, such the UK's The Times (1785) and US daily The Hartford Courant (1764), have been around for hundreds of years, withstanding recessions, new technologies and other threats. Chile's El Mercurio, the oldest continuously circulating periodical published under the same name in Spanish, dates back to 1827. The media business will change, but will survive, so long as democracy does too.

But the problem of violence against journalists needs to be tackled by governments, justice systems and NGOs across the region, across the world, and those of us in this business need to be sure that our focus is not lost.