Protect The Media

Re-published Editorial from Mindanao Daily Mirror, September 6, 2013, with friendly permission of my publisher and editor-in-chief Marietta Songco.

"The attacks on the media in the Philippines continue unabated, with a radio broadcaster getting shot dead in Iligan City last week and two Davao City media executives getting convicted of libel also last week. These two may seem to be very different cases, and in many ways they are: one was a violent crime, while the other was a long drawn-out case. But the net effect is the same: media practitioners know they live under a sword that could fall on their heads any time, in one way or another.

What confounds the media community is how indifferent government has been  to its plights. Almost three decades have passed since the 1986 People Power revolution that supposedly brought democracy back to the country, and yet here we are, a media industry constantly under threat of being killed, arrested, jailed, imprisoned. 

Of the roughly 200 journalists killed since 1986, more than 130 were murdered in the time of their duty. Most of the killers have gone scot-free, and practically all masterminds have never been arrested. Five presidents have taken residence in Malacanang, but none of them have taken concrete steps to protect the media.

As for libel, government has shown no inclination to decriminalize it, making the Philippines one of a very countries where one can go to prison for expressing oneself. Freedom of expression is enshrined in our Constitution, but as long as libel is a criminal offense, we will be merely paying lip services to it. Every single journalist lives with the thought that he or she could go to prison  for something he or she wrote or said on air, and that can have profound effects on how the truth is reported. Under threat of libel, explosive stories can have a way of disappearing from view, neer to be seen to the public.

The Aquino adminstration styles itself as the one that is walking the straight and narrow path, but it has a ling way to go to prove its commitment by way of protecting the media. Without free media, good government is nothing but fiction."