Politicians and judges are increasingly using lawsuits and regulations to curb press freedom in Mexico, according to journalism watchdogs, raising concern over a wider shift from direct pressure to legal action.

Article 19 said 69 new lawsuits were filed against journalists or media outlets in Mexico in 2025, or one every six days, triple the number from the previous year.

Watchdog groups say the legal route can be more damaging because it carries the appearance of legitimacy.

Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said politicians have discovered that lawsuits are "a much more effective way to silence the press because they give the impression of legality".One of the clearest examples, critics say, is in Campeche, where the 50-year-old daily Tribuna had long been a leading media outlet during the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed the state for nearly a century.

After Layda Sansores of the ruling Morena party won the 2021 gubernatorial election, the relationship changed sharply.

Sansores withdrew government advertising from Tribuna, revenue the paper needed to keep publishing. She also began her own television programme to promote her administration and attack journalists, handing out Oscar-style awards called the "Golden Pinocchio" to those she called the biggest "liars".Tribuna published columns strongly criticising Sansores, and those columns at times went beyond her politics.

The criticism grew sharper and included gender-specific and homophobic attacks.

In 2024, after losing revenue, the newspaper stopped printing but continued publishing online, including harsh articles against Sansores.

Sansores then filed several civil and criminal complaints against Jorge Luis Gonzalez, who served as Tribuna's editor for three decades and still contributes to it, alleging moral damage, gender-based political violence and hate speech.

In mid-2025, one of the criminal cases led judges to bar Gonzalez from journalism for two years and to require a judicial censor to review Tribuna articles before they were published online. Press freedom groups strongly condemned the order, saying prior censorship is unacceptable and warning it could become a precedent. Gonzalez said he immediately appealed against the measures, and a judge temporarily suspended them while the case awaits a final ruling. Sansores has denied persecuting or censoring the press and said her lawsuits are meant to protect women.

She did not respond to requests for comment. Several local reporters said she had also changed how the authorities control the press. Campeche officials now "stop you with lawsuits", said local journalist and digital content creator Ronny Aguilar.

Reporters Without Borders has also warned about the growing use of laws as weapons against the press, especially in the Americas. In the United States, President Donald Trump has barred reporters from three news outlets from the White House, stepping up pressure through the courts and administrative action. The Associated Press is also suing after the president's decision last year to block AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some events in retaliation for the agency's refusal to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partly in Mexican and other waters.

In Mexico, the growing use of the judicial system against the press has come alongside a rise in killings of journalists. CPJ said seven journalists have been killed this year, five of them in less than three months, one of the deadliest spikes in more than a decade. Some journalists targeted by lawsuits, including Veracruz crime reporter Rafael Leon, said the experience had changed how they work.

Leon said terrorism charges against him were dropped after President Claudia Sheinbaum intervened, but he now reports less and works in fear. Sheinbaum has taken a softer tone towards some journalists than her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but a new federal regulation to protect "audiences' rights", due to take effect this month, has alarmed press watchdogs. The president has said it will better protect the public's right to complain about publications without leading to censorship. Some groups fear it could allow the state to step into some disputes ahead of Mexico's 2027 elections.

Leopoldo Maldonado, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said governments may have valid reasons to tackle disinformation or hate speech, but warned that laws making the state and judges arbiters of truth "generally end very badly". He said such laws often depend on vague concepts that should not be handled through criminal law.

Maldonado said legislation aimed at fake news had created problems in Turkiye, Malaysia and Singapore. He added that counterterrorism laws in Africa's Sahel region were being used against political opponents and journalists covering armed conflict. Referring to Russia, he warned that the use of the term "foreign agents" to restrict journalism is spreading across the Americas. He also said many government officials fuel hate campaigns, and called for regulation of the excessive power of digital platform owners and a bigger role for civil society in that process.

In Campeche, the state Human Rights Commission and activists are pushing legislation to protect human rights defenders and journalists. At the building that once housed the Tribuna newsroom, boxed-up computers are waiting to be sold, offices remain empty and printing presses are standing idle. Only a television studio is still functioning.

Gonzalez continues to record his weekly political commentary video, and the lawsuits by government officials against journalists continue as well.

The developments in Campeche and across Mexico have sharpened concerns over the use of legal tools against the press, even as journalists face violence and increasing pressure.

Watchdog groups say the shift from open confrontation to court action has made the fight over press freedom more complex, but no less serious. With PTI Inputs- Ends