Obituary for Esther Chavez, the woman who worked tirelessly to call attention to the murders of more than 100 women in Ciudad Juarez.

This makes me recall my first and one of the few reprimands or corrections I was given when I started out as a newsroom assistant in broadcast news.

I wrote a story about the Juarez murders, as assigned and used the words “police claim” while discussing how the police denied the obscene amount of women that had been killed and were dismissive of efforts to find the murderer(s).

Now the word “claim” was used all the time in other stories, but when an authority figure is questioned, that sent up a red flag.

I told the anchor and supervisor that questioned me that I didn’t believe “them” - the police’s claims, because of dozens of stories documenting the murders that our own newspaper had run, etc. That was not good enough, because I got a lecture about inserting my viewpoints into the stories and once later heard about my “politics” getting into the news.

I kept my politics out of the news, so that’s why this incident still smarts. Questioning authority is often a very good thing. That’s what I did and was “corrected” and that’s what Chavez did until the end.

Anyway. God bless you, Esther Chavez.