PARIS – Mexico is the most dangerous country in Latin America for the press, Reporters Without Borders said Monday after a third journalist was reported killed within a month in that country.

“The authorities are failing to respond adequately to a wave of threats against media personnel by presumed drug traffickers and, in some cases, by local officials,” RSF, as the Paris-based organization is known, said in a statement.

Jorge Ochoa Martinez, editor of the daily El Sol de la Costa and the weekly El Oportuno, was fatally shot last Friday in Ayutla de los Libres, a town in the southern state of Guerrero.

RSF noted that the family of the 55-year-old victim said he may have been killed for reasons relating to his work.

With the death of Ochoa Martinez, 61 journalists have now been slain in Mexico since 2000.

Mexico sunk to 137th place out of 175 in RSF’s 2009 global press freedom index. EFE