Editor’s note: Situation Normal

SINCE 1986 journalists have been killed in this country with such regularity that the killings came dangerously close to being regarded as normal. Indeed, until the number of killings escalated to 15 in 2004, the Manila press was virtually ignoring the killing of their colleagues in the communities, with some journalists even claiming that being killed was among the acceptable risks of the profession.

Being killed for reporting and commenting on events and issues is in fact not an acceptable risk in journalism. Ideally involved in the impartial dissemination of information, journalism should be immune to the violence that attends such professions as police or military work. That it isn’t speaks volumes about the complexity and perils of the environments in which journalists have to function. But it also says much about the regrettable failure of too many journalists to observe the professional and ethical standards of their calling, which too often results in journalists’ being regarded as partisans in the many conflicts that afflict communities as well as entire countries, and/or as contributory to the escalation of the political and other divisions that haunt many societies including the Philippines.

In this country the killings have been attributed to a number of factors. Basic among these is the weakness of the justice system, which at the community level is most manifest in the involvement of local officials, the police, and the military in many of the killings. As a consequence, prosecuting the killers, and especially the masterminds, is extremely problematic.

The successful prosecution of the killers of Edgar Damalerio and Marlene Esperat was primarily the result of the efforts of the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists, which included the hiring of a private prosecutor. The masterminds in each case are yet to be prosecuted, however, even as the convictions are small consolation given the number of cases—75 out of the 77 since 1986— that are still unresolved.

To these cases, however, others have been added this year, which so far has recorded six journalists killed in the line of duty. Indeed, from the “abnormal” record of two killed in 2007, 2008 has taken its place among the years in which record numbers of journalists had been killed.

As our main story in this issue shows, the killings, though only among the many other threats to press freedom in the Philippines, continue to be the major one. This is due to the culture of impunity that has allowed most of the killings to go unpunished. The key to stopping the killings is thus the prosecution of the killers as well as the masterminds.

As it prepares to greet another year of crisis in the country of our afflictions, in its search for solutions to the killings the journalism community must keep this priority uppermost in its mind, even as it confronts such attempts to undermine its independence as the right of reply bill and the continuing use of criminal libel to harass practitioners. The killing of journalists is an unacceptable abnormality in this rumored democracy, where, despite constitutional protection, press freedom has been under constant threat since 2001.

Luis V. Teodoro

Comments are closed.