The Aquino assassination: The challenge to media
Speech delivered on August 20, 2013 at the Ateneo de Manila University’s “The Aquino Assassination Thirty Years After: A Lecture Series“
Introduction
Because I have been a journalist for so long, this lecture involves personal remembrance. Hopefully this will not get in the way of the main objective, which is to think about the role of the press, not only during the political period under discussion, but in general, as a critical issue affecting our national development. This is something that needs to be emphasized as the press and media are not usually considered in the study of politics and social concerns, including governance and civil society.
I worked at various periods in the past and in differing environments for the press and saw how social and political changes cause changes in the conduct of the press. The press adjusts and adapts to government repression as it does to democratic space. I will focus on the events as affecting the media and the changes in the media environment before and after the Aquino assassination.
I worked briefly in the media before Martial Law, writing mostly on a freelance basis, for magazines and also for television film documentary reports for then Channel 13, a private television station owned by the Sorianos, the same family who were primary owners of San Miguel Corporation. There may have been limits set by the owners of the media company about what programs could do, but there was enough space and freedom to explore public issues.
Philippine Press Freedom
Since its independence from America in 1946 until Martial Law, the Philippine media was set apart from the rest of the counterparts in Southeast Asia where state control and authoritarian regimes limited media freedom. In contrast, Philippine media was free then as it is now, free-wheeling in style and irreverent in tone, taking more to the style of raucous tabloids, whether covering politics or a sex crime. Another difference was private radio and television, although there were small government stations. Journalists modeled themselves after their American counterparts, as watchdogs of power with the mandate “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” There were morning and evening dailies, weekly political magazines, and almost all of which were opposition in tone and tendency.
Martial Law and the State of the Press
Martial Law was declared in September 23, 1972. Marcos ruled by decree and was backed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. It may be a little difficult to imagine how people could accept such a draconian measure and its impact on their lives. But events, such as the ambush of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, which we later learned were staged, had primed public opinion for its acceptance. Many people thought it was necessary, as Marcos explained, because national security was threatened and the state was under attack from Communism, with local rebels aided by foreign support.
There was a curfew at midnight for all citizens, young and old. Some actually spent nights in the military stockades for curfew violations, or simply “stayed in” wherever they were when it was too late to make it home. The police and military were a unified command. And the Metro Com patrols were visible day or night.
Most people tolerated these curtailments of their civil rights. Others chose to challenge the regime from the Underground or were driven to join the armed insurgency, the CPP-NPA, or their above-ground affiliate groups.
On the day of the declaration, all media organizations were closed down. No sounds from the radio. No shows on television. Editors and journalists were selectively picked up by the police and detained along with other political prisoners, politicians and other well known businessmen.
The architects of Martial Law knew that their success depended on how well they silenced the press. First, there was the move to detain indefinitely a select group of journalists, among them, the publisher Chino Roces. With this strong signal from government, most journalists had limited options. They either decided they would work in the media, joining the new news organizations who observed the new rules of the game. Or chose to depart and work abroad. Others shifted to careers in advertising, public relations (PR), government or corporate information. Still others joined the underground dissident groups and worked on their communication efforts.
Eventually, only Marcos’ friends and relatives were allowed to publish newspapers or own or run broadcast stations. Marcos’ friend and aide camp. Swiss business man Hans Menzi owned the Bulletin Today. Another friend, Roberto Benedicto started up The Daily Express. His company also took over the premises on Bohol Avenue where the family of Eugenio Lopez Jr. operated ABS-CBN – to operate the Banahaw Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The president’s brother-in-law, Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez published the newspapers of the Times Journal group. GMA-7 was controlled by another group of friendly businessmen, led by Gilberto Duavit.
Among the effects of this shift to authoritarianism was the re-modeling of journalistic practice in a controlled environment, disrupting the course of media development according to free press tenets.
Marcos Controls
In this initial period, the military assigned censors to review news material before printing. More formally, the government established the Media Advisory Council (MAC) to operate licensing of all broadcast and print organizations. A Department of Information provided propaganda and other news that showed the regime in a positive light.
Later, a system of self-regulation insured controls. The Philippine Press Institute (PPI) closed down. Philippine Association of Publishers, Inc (PAPI) and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) decided to submit themselves to a regulatory framework by which they voluntarily policed their ranks to observe government guidelines: no negative news about the government. Imelda’s photos should never show her in an awkward pose or unflattering angle. Kailangan maganda!
While the military waged war with Muslim militant groups in Mindanao and clashed with the Communist Party’s New People’s Army and their supporters, the Marcos couple enjoyed what appeared to be a general acceptance of their regime. And they avidly courted international approval as well.
On my family’s return to Manila in 1973, Dik Trofeo, a cinematographer and independent producer, asked me to develop audio-scripts for his film productions which he had started to produce for government. As a recognized cinematographer, he became one of the regular producers of government films for the National Media Production Center (NMPC). I was not politically informed nor inclined, and I was eager to just work, so I found myself in the production team that produced film reports, along with Bert Avellana and a few other notables in the business, on official special events around the country and abroad.
A few years later, a job offer to edit TV Times intervened. And I began to cut down government assignments. TV Times critiqued the industry and the programs. And officials did not seem to mind that media had found a “whipping boy” in what was then still an emerging mass medium.
A Shift in the National Mood: The Erosion of Marcos Power
Late in the seventies, a series of oil crises began to affect the Philippine economy and the threat of rations of gasoline and staple products sent jitters through even the circles of the well-to-do. Rumors hinted at a serious power struggle in the Marcos Cabinet, and given Imelda’s strong charm initiative, she was given official positions, among these, as Governor of the enlarged territory of Metro Manila.This turf sharing also caused a division of the house into the President’s and the First Lady’s Men. More important, Marcos was ill and required treatments for failing kidneys. His infrequent public appearance caused more rumors to spread about the jockeying for power within government and shifting loyalties. More and more information flowed through the grapevine, the only real source of independent news as it was owned and operated by everyone. There was more talk about extravagance in the personal lifestyles of the ruling family, relatives and cronies, and official profligacy.
International coverage had also caught on to the economic travails of the regime and the corruption among the cronies attracted negative attention from international media. The latest technology of the time, the Xerox, allowed wide pass-on distribution of these reports locally.
The Women in Media
In 1981, Marcos announced that he was lifting the Martial Law decree, Proclamation 1081, although the police continued to conduct warrantless arrests.
I was invited to write a column for Hans Menzi’s Bulletin Today. One of Bulletin’s columnists, Arlene Babst, had begun to write with great success as a political columnist. Characteristically, she began to tease, tweak the Marcoses and their cronies and their programs. In 1981, she convinced Mr. Menzi to get more women writers. I was her teacher in Maryknoll high school and she included me in list of her recommended writers. I told Arlene that I did not think I was political enough. She said, Oh write about television, write about education and about raising children, all of these themes which journalists regard on the soft side of the news, believing that these too should be given space in Op-Ed. In a month’s time, I wrote my first political column, writing about the Marcos food program which seemed more about its propaganda packaging rather than feeding the poor.
The women writing on the OP-Ed pages broke down editorial resistance in the mainstream press to open criticism of the regime. Menzi agreed it was time to test the waters of government’s tolerance. Significantly, we boosted circulation. We had tapped onto a vein of simmering dissatisfaction and fulfilled the public need to be joined, to be part of the larger community of readers who needed to hear this kind of criticism as these expressed their own.
From 1981 to 1983, I wrote twice a week. Remember that this was before the mobile phone or the Internet. All communication was through snail mail. I began to receive reports about disappearances, killings and repression in the provinces. I would ask these contacts to meet with me so I could check them out as sources. I sought out other sources, including sources close to the military, to verify the accuracy of the stories.
These opened up other stories that were not being reported widely: such as the plight of the poor farmers and fisherfolk as well as the emerging profile of the Catholic Church on the side of human rights and social justice. I had become a political writer. It was not courage or fearlessness. It was simply the thing to do, knowing about these abuses, it would have been more difficult to ignore the obligation.
By June of 1983, colleagues in the media, Arlene, then editor of Bulletin’s Panorama, Letty Magsanoc and columnist Ninez Cacho Olivares, among other women journalists working in Menzi publications, had been eased out of their space.
Sometime in early August, I was invited by Mr. Menzi to his office in Makati. He told me that he got a call from President Marcos who asked, if Melinda de Jesus was a lawyer. When told I was not, the president was supposed to have asked, “Then why is she writing about a court trial?”
I had written about the trial of the local opposition leader in Cagayan de Oro, Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. who was charged on some violation of election rules. Menzi asked me to go on leave and wait for a cooling-off period. I remember his saying, “The President did not ask me to do anything. But I think he is nervous and tense about all this talk about Ninoy coming back. . .I will let you know. I will ask you back.”
At that point, those of us who had been taken out of the pages found ourselves invited to speak in forums and discussion groups, including schools and student groups. Meanwhile, a group of businessmen led by the late Jaime V.Ongpin invited me to work for a newsmagazine they were planning to open, Veritas NewsWeekly.
Veritas newsmagazine specials on Martial Law.
August 21, 1983
So let us focus a bit on the developments of August thirty years ago.
Let me quote Angela Stuart Santiago (Chronology of a Revolution 1986):
In July, Marcos turned down offers by Juan Ponce Enrile to resign. On August 7, Marcos underwent surgery for renal transplant. Acute rejection occurred; the transplanted kidney was removed 48 hours later. On August 21, Aquino returned from self-imposed exile in the United States and was slain as he stepped off a China Air Lines plane at the Manila International Airport.
On that day, Letty Magsanoc Jimenez, Tina Monzon Palma and I went to the Manila International Airport although Letty and I were at the time, jobless journalists. Tina was not assigned by GMA-7 to report on the event. But all three of us felt we had to “just be there” – as though we were being called to observe a historic event. When we arrived at the arrival gate, we could no longer enter the NAIA and were left to stand amidst the throng waiting for the returning Aquino to emerge.
We spotted some FLAG lawyers from inside who mimed action of a shooting by long arm. Did you see that? What are they trying to say? Meanwhile the throng moved as in a wave sideways, as though someone had people had moved toward another direction. We all said, No, nothing’s has happened. There goes Ninoy!
We could not tell as we did not follow the crowd that it was actually Ninoy’s younger brother, Butch, who had walked out of the airport and he and the rest had gone on to Baclaran Church where the rest of the Dona Aurora Aquino’s family was supposed to meet with Ninoy.
As the crowd cleared, we went into the lobby, by now fully informed that indeed the returning politician had been shot upon arrival. Members of the press who had accompanied him were briefing other reporters in the lobby. Ninoy’s sister, Lupita Kashiwahara told me in the airport, Talk to Wakamiya. Talk to Wakamiya. Lupita’s husband, Ken Kashiwahara, reporter for US ABC network, also on the plane with Ninoy. Wakamiya was the Japanese reporter who said he saw the shooting. Another journalist who would be witness in the investigation conducted by the Agrava Commission was Times Bureau Chief in HongKong, Sandra Burton.
We drove to Baclaran and saw the tearful meeting between Ninoy’s sister, Tessie, and his mother, Dona Aurora Aquino. His family, his wife, Cory and all his children were still in Boston and at the time, may not have even heard yet of his death.
The day is forever etched in my mind. We were bystanders at the time, observers on the sideline. But living those moments felt like being swept by a huge wave into deep waters, the depth of which we had not yet plumbed. It is the kind of experience one never forgets.
I went home late in the afternoon and listened to television reports which featured General Prospero Olivas speaking to the press, saying, an assassin, Rolando Galman, killed Aquino as he stepped down the side stairs of the plane under military escort. And that Galman was promptly shot by the military on another side of the tarmac.
At the time, violence was usually limited to local politics and the rivalries these spawned. The murder of national figure like Aquino was the kind of blow which shattered all complacency and indifference about the state’s over-reach and abuse, especially, for those who believed that the government went only after the subversives.
There was shock and fear and anger.
No one believed Galman had shot Aquino. Everyone knew Galman was only a scapegoat.
From that day, people felt urged to link as in a collective, keeping in touch with one another, and shared what reports could be had from abroad and the start of what we dubbed Xerox news which became a critical flow of communication. Information about the plans of the Aquino family was passed around like news from one’s own family in distress.
The widow, Mrs. Aquino, still in Boston, sent a message to Filipinos about her conviction that the Marcos administration was responsible. She was unbelievably calm and I would learn later, she’s calm, no matter what crisis faced her. She was also thinking of the people and their need for comfort. And so her message was taken to heart. She was assuring them she and the children would be home soon.
Each day of the wake, which started even before the Aquino family arrived, drew more people to the Aquino home on Times Street in Quezon City, same house to which Mrs. Aquino would return after her presidency. The family decided that they would have to move the body to Sto. Domingo Church and there the line winded around the entire block, snaking behind the church, People came at all hours, from dawn to darkness until the burial, when over a million people marched, walked, chanted, cheered and shouted anti-Marcos protests.
The Marcos’ Media’s Blind Eye
The people were making news. But they did not see themselves in the news.
Estimates at the time had about a million people who joined the funeral cortege or lined up the streets to pay him homage. People walked together from different parts to join with the main line of mourners.
But the Daily Express headline was about a man who was struck by lightning, as he sat on the branch of a tree to get a view of the funeral cortege making its way through the streets. According to journalists working in the newsrooms at the time, the pictures of the throng and the crowds had to be cropped so as not to show the numbers who were on the streets. While there were TV reports, these did not quite show the massive crowds who followed the coffin as the flatbed which carried the body made its way in the streets along with the massive outpouring of grief and anger.
The people were in the news. But the news did not report their presence. This disconnect had explosive impact on the public consciousness.
This was a turning point. The failure to report the massive public participation in the wake and funeral confirmed what people may have already known but did not think it mattered much. They knew that the press was controlled but they could not know how much they did not know. The coverage was blind to them and this made them realize how much they could be lied to by a press beholden to the powers. This realization served as a rude and brutal awakening. Suddenly they cared that such a historic event and their own participation in it was being downgraded, dismissed as non-news. Suddenly, it mattered that they were being kept ignorant. It was, although the phrase was not yet in use at the time, “the tipping point” for historic change.
Parliament of the Streets
In the next three years, the protests events occupied the streets, dubbed “parliament of the streets.” The different groups of varying political persuasions began to coalesce as a movement with the object to bring down the dictatorship. Every anniversary or milestone related to Aquino’s murder (the ninth day of mourning, the fortieth day, the first, then second anniversary) was an opportunity to gather the numbers, and the provincial contingents enlarged the collective action.
Who were the leaders and organizers? They represented the range of the political spectrum, the left, the moderates, the unaligned; and social sectors quickly organizing themselves, women, students and , professionals. The opposition politicians were back onstage with their fire and brimstone speeches matched by young firebrands on the radical front.
There was also engagement off-street: countless forums and symposia, with endless discussions and debates. Most important was the presence in all this of the Catholic Church and other religious and faith groups. A foreign correspondent said, “I have never had to go to church so often to keep track of a country’s events.”
The Alternative Press
By most accounts, the “alternative” press played a critical role in these developments.
What were these papers?
Veritas NewsWeekly was one of a clutch of publications, mostly weeklies, which set out to serve the public’s hunger for news not framed according to the Crony press. Business Day was a daily, owned by journalist Raul Locsin and which showed its progressive news agenda with its more independent view of the state of business and economics in the country. Malaya, was a daily owned by journalist Jose Burgos until Jake Macasaet bought it from him. Along with Veritas NewsWeekly, there was Mr.& Ms. Special Edition, owned and published by Eugenia Apostol who re-formatted a weekly variety magazine of the same name that she was publishing .
The Philippine News Features was a private news agency which also provided alternative news and was identified with the Left. And so was Midweek.
Veritas
Veritas newsmagazine specials on Martial Law.
A few months after Aquino’s murder, businessman Jaime V. Ongpin called for a boycott of the Marcos papers. Circulation for the Marcos papers declined sharply as people shifted to one or all of the alternative newspapers.
In November 1983, I was called to work as columnist and then associate editor to Felix Bautista, a former journalist who had retired to teaching and speechwriting for Jaime Cardinal Sin, and as a columnist. Veritas was identified with the Catholic Church, primarily, Jaime Cardinal Sin. But it was supported financially by a Jaime Ongpin who sourced funds form his network of friends and business associates. He organized a Board of Advisers, with whom my editor and I met every week to discuss both financial and editorial issues. But this was all after the assassination.
Veritas NewsWeekly was launched in November 1983 and its circulation started peaking to 50,000 in six months time, moving up to the hundred thousands the following year. Veritas invested in provincial distribution and strong sales outside of Manila further boosted its circulation. In September 1985. Marcos announced that he would call an election to prove his hold on the electorate. The campaign for the Snap Elections in early 1986 pushed sales to more than 300,000 copies a week.
The rallies provide space, a real location where people could be joined in their expression of feeling, anger, outrage, shared passion. These news publications provided readers with the resources for collective thought. I like to think that these newspaper provided the public with the place to think. With information and news, analysis and commentary about issues not covered by the Crony press, the alternative publications clarifying complex political, economic and social issues that had to be sorted out so that people could to think through the strategy for regime change as well as for good governance.
Veritas newsmagazine specials on Martial Law.
Veritas newsmagazine specials on Martial Law.
The Challenge
In periods of crisis, the stakeholders, including the general public, turn to the press for the connection to the unknown numbers of people and to hold a conversation with the communities they did not know. They need the instrumentation of the press to enlarge their capacity to discuss what must be done. I think this should happen all the time but it doesn’t usually happen without a shared sense of urgency brought on by some kind of crisis.
Working in the alternative press, I came to realize how this collaboration between the press and its readers/audience happens. I had noted the accuracy made by Alexis de Toqueville’s observation, when traveling through America in the 19th century wrote “The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to a great number of persons, but to furnish the means for executing in common the designs which they have singly conceived.”
Alternative Press: Give them the News
We were fully aware that the public had turned away from the Marcos press because they wanted information and news. We packed each weekly edition with news about the political opposition, the emergence of Cory Aquino as its leader, along with the debates about boycott and participation of the Batasan Pambansang elections of 1985.
We included reports from the provinces, with the famine stalking the poor of Negros, with the fall of sugar prices; and developments from all fronts in Mindanao. We provided a close up view of the Agrava Commission sessions which was mandated to investigate the assassination of Ninoy and on to the trial of those named in the Sandiganbayan.
It was also the place to share the different forms of protest undertaken by artists, theater groups and musicians. Street theater and protest performances competed for public attention. The reports about what others were doing in protest expanded the sense of community and connection.
Veritas also gave space to the voice of the community of faith, as many Filipinos began to look at the need for regime change as a value arising from their religious belief.
At the same time, we tracked the insurgency, featured interviews with Satur Ocampo, Antonio Zumel, Nur Misuari and the rebel priest, Conrado Balweg. We documented cases of human rights violations reported from the field by a network of correspondents in the provinces.
In cooperation with Lew Simon of the San Jose Mercury News, Veritas traced the local flow of Marcos hidden wealth.
Veritas analyzed the political configurations and the ideological divisions of all those opposed to Marcos, from the radical left, the national democrats, the social democrats and determined that only if they agreed to unite could they succeed in toppling Marcos.
We looked for developments before they became news and gathered as much as we could of the facts, so that we could our readers the sense of truth.
The fluidity of the situation made for the most exciting journalism and I for one know it was truly a privilege to be working as a journalist at the time.
Empowering Readers with Truth
The alternative press anywhere is an advocate for something. It decides that the people are not getting the information they need to decide to work for some good. There are natural advocacies that a free press undertakes in the course of their reporting, they must support campaigns for truth, for freedom and for justice.
Journalistic advocacy had to be based on facts. It was a challenge to provide truthful reports at all times. The advocacy would not be served by careless reporting. We were quick to correct honest mistakes and to own up to shortcomings. We could not take credibility lightly.
Because Veritas was published weekly, the challenge also gave news with perspective, context, analysis and commentary. News accounts which are reported according to formula of providing the five “Ws” must go beyond the first three “Ws” which can only provide so much truth.
The task of our publications was to help our readers clarify for themselves what they thought of the issues. In-depth reporting breaks through the surface of what of is happening to give meaning to the events and the conditions of the times.
Perhaps, if we had the resources to produce a daily newspaper, there might have been the temptation to go the path of scoops, wanting to be the first. The weekly edition forced us to go on another level of journalism, one which was critically important then, but perhaps, even now in the age of Internet and social media.
In the political ferment of the time, and the great fluidity of issues and developments, Veritas’ challenge, which we discussed with great awareness in our newsroom, was to help readers get to the meaning of events, and from there decide what the citizen community should do.
I think the alternative press may not have succeeded all the time to provide the necessary guidance of thought to their readers, given the great state of fluidity of the political situation and the difficulty to break through to some official sources.
But we did succeed in pushing forward one crucial point, the need for unity in the opposition, the need to name the one person who could unify the movement against Marcos, reporting on the role of Corazon Aquino and her potential for national leadership.
Genuinely reluctant to become a politician, Mrs. Aquino had asked me to stop writing about her as a candidate. She said, “My family has suffered enough.” But people agreed that she possessed something special. Among other capable leaders, she was primus inter pares, first among equals — for her lack of political ambition, the absence of a personal agenda, and her characteristically moral response. She would ask herself at every juncture and tried to respond as best she could: What is the right thing to do?
The Convenor Group made up of academic, civic and business leaders convened the process of selection and when the time came, everyone acknowledged the uniquely transcendent persona she was and agreed the nation needed her leadership.
In the three years framed by the two events, the killing of Ninoy Aquino and the People Power uprising on EDSA, the alternative press succeeded to galvanize the political will to erode the ruling power, enliven citizen awareness of their role in the struggle for freedom, and to hold together through dialogue and debate a national community committed to restore democracy in the Philippines.
And it was the same alternative press which celebrated the promise of Corazon Aquino as an icon of Philippine democracy.
The Challenge Then and Now
The essential challenge for the Press media does not change.
Then and now, the press has to provide as much of the facts that can be known. They are the ones who have access to sources. They are the ones who are trained to follow the paper trail, the money trail. Journalists can gather as much of the news from a community all around the country.
So the press must always satisfy the hunger for news. In a critical passage, it may be easier to discern what the people need to know without concern for profit and commercialism. Usually, during a crisis, a kind of popular wisdom arises, and the people’s capacity to search out what they need to know joins the press in active collaboration with their readers and audience — to end an evil, perhaps, to bring about change.
But in a free society, contradictory forces can also divergent forces can muddle the issues and use the press as well to distract from what is important; or worse, to contaminate the information flow with deception.
So the press must work even harder in such an environment to make sure they are doing their part in this critical collaboration.
Journalism leads to provide the facts, the context, the analysis. Using these inputs, the public must take the lead in strategic action.
In the age of new media, this leadership join at certain points. Public inputs can take the lead as sources become more dispersed. And social media can be an enhancement or it can also derail the course of dialogue and debate with false leads, with distracting issues and with your commonplace trivia.
In an age when the public becomes a news provider as well, the public must share the burden that the press has historically carried. In the age of new media, every citizen must work harder to sort out the flows of information, discerning the credibility not only of the information but also the source.
In such an age, the challenge that confronts the press is a challenge that everyone must take.
what an excellent summary of the transition from the Martial Law days of Marcos to the awakening of democracy by the Filipino people. Thank you. And can you do a continuation until the Cory Presidency and the migration of Marcos from Malacanang to Hawaii?