Monitor Michoacan via Twitter

Armando Linares, director of the news site Michoacan Monitor, was shot and killed outside his home on March 15, 2022.

Armando Linares was shot down outside his home Tuesday in the state of Michoacán.

Linares’ murder is the at least the eighth this year, surpassing in less than three months the seven reporters killed in Mexico in all of 2021, when Reporters Without Borders called it the deadliest country in the world for journalists.

Linares was the director of the Michoacán Monitor. Earlier this year, he posted a video to social media after his colleague Roberto Toledo was also gunned down.

"We're not armed. We don't carry weapons. Our only defense is a pen, a pencil, a notepad," Linares said at the time.

"We have been suffering a series of death threats. Today, they finally carried out one of those threats and today they murdered one of the members of our team," he said. "That's how things are with the Michoacán Monitor. Demonstrate the corruption, of corrupt governments, of corrupt officials and politicians, today brought death to one of our colleagues."

The wave of murders has sparked international outcry, including by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the European parliament, which called out Mexico’s president continued public attacks journalists critical of him amid the crisis of killings.