NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico, July 30 (UPI) -- Mexican reporters say they have been threatened regularly for daring to cover the ongoing carnage of their country's drug wars.

Routine gunfights and gruesome killings receive scant attention in Mexican newspapers and television broadcasts because journalists fear for their lives, the Houston Chronicle said Friday.

"Nowhere is the media controlled more than it is here," one anonymous reporter in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, told the Chronicle. "There is total control."

The "control" comes mainly in the form of threats from the Zetas, a cadre of narcotics enforcers who many reporters say run things in the border city.

The Zetas recently ordered local papers to print stories and photos of four bodies dumped outside the Laredo bullring as a warning to rival drug gangs, journalists told the Chronicle.

The Chronicle said many Nuevo Laredo residents feel cut off from the rest of the world and don't really know what is going on in their own community.

Social media have attempted to fill some of the void. However Twitter, blogs and other such outlets have quickly become riddled with unconfirmed rumors and conflicting information.