How disinformation led a journalist to flee her country

As a television journalist for CNN Espanol in Guatemala’s capital, Michelle Mendoza covered big stories, including a deadly volcanic eruption.

“From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. they report what’s happening,” Mendoza said. “My strength lies in covering the history of humanity.”

Mendoza also reported more controversial stories, including traveling with migrant caravans heading north through Guatemala to the United States and reports of violent attacks by the Guatemalan army on those migrants.

After 2017, inspired by a United Nations report on the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, it began investigating allegations against criminal networks operating within the country’s government – accusing them of corruption, organized crime and human rights abuses.

“They come to show us, not just the journalist, the entire Guatemalan people, how entrenched corruption is in our state,” Mendoza explained.

Attacks on Mendoza’s reporting

Shortly after she began reporting on these allegations, Mendoza received a chilling warning.

“A source spoke to me and she told me, ‘Hey, you need to be careful because I got information that the government might pay $50,000 to rape you,'” she said

It escalated in 2020 when she said a new government had come to power. False information about Mendoza appeared online, attacking her reputation, skills as a journalist and as a mother.

“If I say, ‘This is what’s happening in the government palace,’ whatever I publish, they say, ‘No, she’s doing this because she gets money for political things, she’s a prostitute, she’s someone’s lady.’ “,” Mendoza recalled. “They said I have three or four houses in my country because I get paid a lot of money for publishing. No, that’s not true.”

Mendoza makes a life-changing decision

Disinformation would soon become a gateway to much darker dangers. The harassment became so bad for Mendoza that she started a group chat with eight friends and forwarded the correspondence she received as a kind of real-time record of the attacks. She believes the evidence also helped strengthen her case when she left Guatemala.

In 2023, Mendoza made the drastic decision to seek asylum in the United States and flee her country. The asylum application she shared with Scripps News documented years of harassment and terror. Mendoza said she was followed and photographed at the supermarket and in a park with her daughters. The application also said that the Guatemalan army sent a funeral wreath with her name on it to her parents’ home. Mendoza also reported a sexually explicit video call while she was in the United States for work.

“I answered the call and there was a video,” she told Scripps News, describing a sexual act performed by a man. “He told me, ‘This is what will happen to you if you go back to Guatemala.'” In the days following that call, she received rape threats if she didn’t stop reporting.

Mendoza says she felt so unsafe even at home that she recruited friends in the neighborhood to keep an eye out for unknown people and cars driving through the streets.

She bluntly shared that she feared being killed while living in Guatemala: “Yes, of course.”

Not the only one

For a growing number of female journalists around the world, online harassment fueled by disinformation and spread on social media platforms is leading to real threats of violence. The goal: to stop journalists from reporting.

Around 1,100 female journalists were surveyed in a three-year international study by the International Center for Journalists and UNESCO. More than 70% said they had experienced online violence while reporting. More than 40% said violence was part of what they believed was a coordinated disinformation campaign.

“This is not a problem that only occurs in countries that we traditionally associate with despotic regimes and a lack of security for the practice of journalism or in war zones,” Dr. Julie Posetti, associate vice president and global research director of the ICFJ, and one of the report’s editors. “This is an issue that affects women from London to Lagos.”

“Disinformation is a tactic used by malicious actors, misogynistic networks, and foreign state actor-led interventions to silence critical reporting,” Posetti said. “In such campaigns, female journalists are specifically confronted with misogynistic harassment and insults. But this often also includes the inclusion of disinformation narratives.”

Posetti said there is evidence that these online harassment campaigns tend to cause the targeted female journalists to back away.

“You have to take your time,” she added.

Asked what the loss would be to the public if these women journalists were silenced, Posetti replied: “They are losing a kind of diverse understanding of life in 2024. So when women journalists are removed from the mix, we have fewer experiences. “If we reflect that, we have fewer sources being contacted and we have poorer representation of communities that need to see themselves reflected in the coverage of their lives.”

Life in America

Mendoza was granted asylum in the United States in October 2023. Now based in Washington, DC, she is finding her voice by speaking out about the threat of disinformation to female journalists.

But even in the country to which she fled, attacks on Mendoza continued. Scripps News found recent social media posts threatening Mendoza.

Scripps news

Translation: A cocaine-addicted iguana screaming in rage because her visa was revoked, and what’s not remembered is that she CANNOT enter her own country because she’s a drug dealer – and her daughters are being raised by a stepmother, what an idiot Berta.

Scripps news

Translation: What good did activist Berta Mendoza bring to the country? She gave nothing, neither she nor anyone in her family, on the contrary, her brother Transita Mendoza plundered MIDES and her mother Martina obstructed justice. iguana

Scripps news

Translation: Now the pseudo-journalist Berta Mendoza Guillotina, aka the chewing iguana, has become a crime scene analyst for us. She completed her 2nd grade with pure pushing, but is a great expert in everything.

Scripps news

Translation: Fugitive from justice, accused of crimes against humanity

Despite the threats, she still reports for a newspaper in Guatemala, although Mendoza has lost what means most to a journalist: her name – because she is too afraid to put her name on her work.

“I never thought I’d be here,” Mendoza said. “And I’m grateful. Thank you very much. But that wasn’t my plan. That wasn’t my choice. I am here because I have no choice for my safety, for my life.”