With the murder of Roberto Toledo, Mexico adds four journalists murdered in 2022 | Photo: EFE

Mexico City, February 1 (RHC)-- Mexico has reported the fourth journalist murdered so far this year, with the confirmed homicide of reporter Roberto Toledo, in the state of Michoacán.

The director of the local media, Monitor Michoacán, Armando Linares indicated that the journalist was attacked by three armed men in the parking lot of the building where the media outlet where he worked in the municipality of Zitácuaro is located.

Roberto Toledo was shot twice in the abdomen, once in the thorax, once in an arm and once in a collarbone.

Upon learning of the murder, the Coordinator of Social Communication of the Presidency, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, said via Twitter that the Mexican Government "condemns the murder of journalist Roberto Toledo of the Monitor Michoacán portal." 

The State Attorney General's Office (FGE) of Michoacán reported that it is conducting investigations to determine if the murder of the communicator is related to his journalistic activity.  However, the director of Monitor Michoacán attributed the incident to the fact that his media outlet is dedicated to exposing corruption by authorities and politicians. 

In local media, Armando Linares said that the news outlet had received threats for the entire team and that these began a year ago when the media outlet exposed corruption by a former high-ranking official of the state Attorney General's Office.

The murder of the reporter in the state of Michoacán comes less than a week after a massive day of protests throughout the country due to the recent murders of journalists in Mexico.

Before Roberto Toledo's murder, José Luis Gamboa was killed in the port of Veracruz (Veracruz) on January 10 and Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonado in Tijuana (Baja California) on January 17 and 23, respectively.