Multi-sourcing needed: Media’s treatment of killings should go beyond military sources

JEERS TO several print media organizations for taking the word of the military about the death of a volunteer teacher and four others in the province of Davao de Oro. 

On February 24, 2022, Chad Booc, a volunteer teacher in an alternative school and four other persons were killed in Purok-8, Barangay Andap, in the municipality of New Bataan. The military claimed the victims died in an “armed encounter” between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the New People’s Army (NPA), but their families and friends said otherwise.

These media accounts said nothing about reporters’ reaching out to other sources. Perhaps in the haste to break the news, the reports simply repeated what the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) said. 

The media groups that echoed the military line in their reports included the Daily Tribune, Cebu Daily News, Manila Bulletin, Pilipino Star Ngayon, The Philippine Star, Manila Times, and Manila Standard.

“IP recruiter, Rebels fall”, “Chad Booc ‘di lang guro, isang NPA”, and “Booc not just a teacher, but NPA recruiter” were among the headlines that carried the military narrative of red-tagging civilians. 

Last year, on February 21, 2021, Booc was one of the seven arrested in a police raid on the retreat house of the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, where Lumad students and their teachers had taken temporary shelter. But some media outlets echoed the police version that they had to rescue the students from the teachers who they claimed had taken the children by force. 

The police charges were later dismissed by the provincial prosecutor of Davao del Norte for lack of jurisdiction, insufficiency of evidence and lack of probable cause. Booc was also among the petitioners against the Anti-Terror Law. 

Unfortunately, the reports on the death of Booc and companions did not refer to the dismissal of the charges in Cebu and retained the military claim that Booc was a recruiter for the NPA . 

The reports heavily quoted Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III, commander of the Army’s 1001st Infantry Brigade, who said in a press briefing on February 26 that the victims were NPA fighters and indigenous people (IP) recruiters. He added that firearms and personal belongings were recovered at the “encounter” site following the alleged 15-minute gun battle. 

The red-tagging should have provoked  questions on the part of the media, as journalists and media members have been subjected to the same reckless and often lethal charges. 

Other media reports did a more complete check for sources and included the perspective of Save Our Schools (SOS) Network which on their Facebook page, said that the group consisted of two Lumad volunteer teachers, Chad Booc and Gelejurain Ngujo II, community health worker Elgyn Balonga, and two drivers. 

SOS Network added that the group was on a community visit as part of its research work. Balonga was able to send a text message to her family asking to be fetched. Their statement also said that the local folk said there was no gunfight. 

Marco Valbuena, media officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), also said in a tweet that NPA units in Davao de Oro denied that there was an armed encounter on Thursday, as Durante claimed. 

Also in their Facebook statement, SOS said that Booc, Ngujo II, and Balonga had been subjected to numerous death threats, harassment, red-tagging and surveillance. 

“It is then even more deplorable that the people who take  the initiative to serve in far-flung communities, where the Duterte government cares little to address the needs of its residents, are targeted and killed,” SOS Network added.

Clearly the story of Chad Booc deserved much more from the media.  Where the story involves claims about the dead, journalists should take care not to publish anything that could be proven false. In this case, there were enough signals to warn the media against merely relying on military sources. Multi-sourcing is in fact a standard journalism principle in making sure that reports are truthful.

Journalists should be more sensitive about accepting without question what the NTF-ELCAC has to say as the task force has proven how recklessly it red-tags individuals, including journalists. It uses that tactic against anyone it can conveniently label as part of, or even just sympathetic to, the Left. In most cases, their targets have turned out to be social and political activists and government critics.

This situation clearly calls for more nuanced coverage, drawing on more sources as required by a complex story. Reports about the supposed links of individuals to communist groups call for background. And that background should not be dictated by the military and the short-sighted officers now assigned by Duterte to eliminate the alleged threat of Communism.