Weeks after the gruesome murder of Lourdes Maldonado Lopez, another Mexican journalist, Roberto Toledo, has been killed by assailants, the Associate Press reports.

Mr Toledo, who works for Monitor Michoacan, an online news outlet, was reportedly shot dead by three armed men on his arrival at the office on Monday.

The journalist was preparing to record a video interview before his assassination, becoming the fourth journalist killed in January 2022 alone.

Monitor Michoacán director, Armando Linares, who was scheduled to be part of the interview said they had planned to meet at the office before the unfortunate incident.

“Twenty minutes before I had told him by phone that we were going to meet at the office to interview a person,” Mr Linares said, “I got held up a little and he arrives before I do, goes in, closes the door, but almost immediately they rang,” the director said.

Mr Linares disclosed that the news outlet in the business of covering sensitive issues, had received threats for reporting on governmental corruption.

“For exposing corrupt administrations and corrupt officials and politicians, today that led to the death of one of our colleagues,” Mr Linares said.

“The Monitor Michoacán team has suffered weeks, months of death threats. We know where all of this comes from,” he added.

The director further disclosed that he was now under the  protection of the country’s National Guard.

Prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan said that investigations have commenced in the city of Zitacuaro.

The Michoacan State Attorney’s Office in a statement said that the journalist died at a hospital from wounds sustained during the attack.

A study by Reporters without Borders described Mexico as “one of the most dangerous and deadliest countries for the media” after it ranked 143 on the Data of Press Freedom Ranking 2021, where 180 countries were assessed.

RSF’s Mexico analysis notes that “Collusion between officials and organised crime poses a grave threat to journalists’ safety and cripples the judicial system at all levels.

“Journalists who cover sensitive political stories or crime, especially at the local level, are warned, threatened and then often gunned down in cold blood. Others are abducted and never seen again, or they flee abroad as the only way to ensure their survival.” 

Mr Toledo’s murder has been preceded by the brutal murders of Ms Lopez, Alfonso Margarito Martínez, a photojournalist shot and killed on January 17 in Tijuana and José Luis Gamboa who was knived to death in Veracruz state earlier this month.