The Massacre Watch

“The Ampatuan Massacre was both a reminder of that purpose and among the news media’s most important subjects then, two years ago, as well as now and in the coming years of the trial of the accused planners and perpetrators.” – Luis V. Teodoro

Please read below Luis V. Teodoro’s complete keynote address presented in “A Forum on Media and Human Rights: Commemorating Ampatuan Massacre” at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication Auditorium last Nov. 16, 2011.

When the Ampatuan Town Massacre of November 23, 2009 occurred and its brutal details were known, it encouraged attempts at self-examination among some media advocacy and journalists’ groups, and even in the newspapers and broadcast networks that for years had been ignoring the killing of journalists.

Among the questions these groups and some communication academics asked then, and have since been asking, is whether the Massacre has imposed on the media such supposedly additional responsibilities as providing more information than the daily news agenda makes available, as well as analysis and interpretation beyond the usual front-page, op-ed and evening news menu of politics, crime and scandal.

The Massacre has since become an international symbol of the perils journalists and political activists face in failing and failed states (international media watch and press freedom groups have declared November 23, 2011 the International Day to End Impunity). The Massacre was not only election-related. It was also the worst attack in Philippine history on the press as a necessary institution of democracy.

To any practitioner with some experience, the suggestion that the news media should pay less attention to trivia and scandal is already a fundamental principle. But it does seem novel in the context of what has been common practice in the Philippine press. To some journalists immersed in the daily grind of deadlines and news quotas, and such other burdens as corruption and plain incompetence, the duty to provide the public information on matters that concern it, and the analysis and interpretation that can enhance citizen capacity to make the informed decisions free men and women must make in a democracy, are either irrelevant to reporting the latest rumor on which actor is sleeping with whom, or even totally unfamiliar.

And yet, what the press is basically being told is to do a better job of both reporting as well as explaining those events, issues and developments most relevant to the lives of that segment of humanity known as Filipinos.

Journalism after all shares with literature, the sciences and religion the fundamental need for human beings to understand the world so they may change it. It can’t do that job, and can instead compound ignorance, and harm individuals and even society as a whole, if the information and analysis it provides are inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or bought and paid for by interests opposed to those of the public’s.

One hopes that everyone who has gone through an ethics course, especially in this College, understands that the news media cannot meet their responsibilities to the public without complying with the professional and ethical standards of journalism. If the Ampatuan Massacre achieved anything, it was to remind journalists—or those who could still be reminded—of the imperative to observe those standards of media practice many had forgotten, or had never even known.

Among those values is that of truth-telling, which in practice demands accuracy in both factual and contextual terms. This has always been a fundamental press responsibility. But it has become even more relevant in the aftermath of the Massacre. Not only is the reporting of the details of that event and its aftermath an inalienable press obligation , even more important is the investigation and analysis of its context in behalf of the public need to better understand it and the killing of journalists.

That responsibility seemed evident to some practitioners then, two years ago. A week or so after November 23, 2009, several media organizations and media advocacy and journalists’ groups pledged never to relent in the pursuit of justice for the victims, and to do whatever needs to be done towards achieving that end, whether by constantly monitoring the progress or lack of it of the investigation and prosecution of the accused, bringing the issue to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, filing a suit before the International Criminal Court, or even asking for the deployment of UN peace-keeping troops.

The last alternative was not mentioned lightly, but in all seriousness. UN peace-keeping forces have been deployed in failed states, and a number of indications did suggest that the Philippines was fast approaching that state under the malignant rule of a rapacious political elite.

The occasion for the pledge was the media briefing by the November 25-30, 2009 Humanitarian and Fact Finding Mission to Maguindanao organized by the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJP) of the Philippines. FFFJ was organized in 2003 in response to the killing of journalist Edgar Damalerio in Pagadian City. A coalition of the Philippine Press Institute, the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (Association of Broadcasters of the Philippines), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Center for Community Journalism and Development, Philippine News, and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility which serves as its secretariat, FFFJ provides humanitarian, legal, educational and other support for the survivors of slain journalists. The FFFJ member-organizations are part of the national and international networks of journalist, press freedom watch, and free expression groups. The NUJP on the other hand is the biggest organization of journalists in the Philippines, with 62 chapters across the country. It is a full member of the International Federation of Journalists.

Despite the pledge, however, over the last 24 months there has been a perceptible slowing down in the commitment to keep the issue in the public eye. Evidently, the conventional news value of focusing on the new, which we all know as the principle of timeliness, but which as a professional emphasis has not escaped criticism, has pushed aside reporting on the progress of the trial of the accused and the wealth of issues arising from the Massacre and the killing of journalists and media workers from 1986 onwards.

And yet, should not the Massacre have provoked the press into looking into the state of the country and its institutions beyond the mere reporting of events? This is a rhetorical question, but it does seem too much to ask of a media system focused on beauty pageants, boxing matches and the juicy details of an alleged fratricide.

In 2003 it needed a spike in the killings for the national press to even report that these killings had been happening in the community press since 1986. As for looking into their causes, foreign media and press freedom watched groups were even ahead of what’s usually referred to as “the mainstream” Philippine press in the attempt to explain why, in a country supposedly at peace, and where press freedom is explicitly protected by the Constitution, the killing of journalists had assumed near epidemic proportions. By June 2003 Lin Neumann of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists had already written an in-depth report on the May killing of Edgardo Damalerio in Pagadian City.

The journalists’ and media advocacy organizations’ pledge was made about a week after a revealing admission by then Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, who, when asked by reporters why the Arroyo regime could not stop the killing of journalists, declared that the central government “does not have full control on the situation on the ground, mortals as we are.”

No one in the media was paying enough attention to look into the implications of that statement. And yet they were significant enough. In failed and failing states humanity is under siege from rampaging warlords, criminal gangs and other marauders governments can’t or won’t control.

The United States keeps close watch of such states, not because it’s concerned with the fate of the millions suffering under repressive rule, but because it fears the rise of what it calls “illegitimate” power groups hostile to US interests. We don’t need to buy into that totally self-centered concern, however. What’s crucial about failed and failing states is their impact on the lives of their people, and what that status says about their economic, social and economic structures and the urgent imperatives of change, whether through reform or revolution.

That it couldn’t prevent murders, assassinations and such collateral damage as the killing of several people who just happened to be passing by the Maguindanao killing fields, didn’t mean the Arroyo regime couldn’t murder whom it wanted. Apparently it could, if we’re to go by the toll in extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture and other human rights violations it had inflicted since 2001 on political and human rights activists, priests and nuns, local officials, judges, students, lawyers, and anyone else guilty of exposing and resisting corruption, and fighting injustice and the many other ills that afflict Philippine society.

If the above is a demonstration that the regime still had teeth when it came to suppressing human rights, the slaughter of November 23, for which it earned the contempt not only of human rights groups and media advocacy organizations all over the world, but of much of humanity as well, is a prime example of its weakness, about which the citizens of this country could have been better enlightened.

The November 23 atrocity qualifies for the outrage and condemnation of every man and woman of decency, and the strongest call for the immediate apprehension, trial and punishment of those responsible. The butchers of November 23 and their masters are after all the deranged children of a culture where the pursuit of power without moral limits is universally tolerated. For this reason alone the media have every right and indeed the responsibility to monitor as closely as possible the progress, or lack of it, of the trial of those accused of planning and carrying out the Massacre—all 196 of them.

The November 23 mass murders in one day bloated the number of journalists killed for their work from three in 2009 to at least 34, and added so many more to the 124 already killed in the Philippines since 1986. But what’s worse is that unless the killers are called to account, the Massacre will further encourage more killings by demonstrating that no one or almost no one who kills to intimidate the press or for a political purpose need fear retribution. Only arresting and bringing the perpetrators to court and credibly concluding the trial can prevent the November 23 killings from turning into one more incident to inspire the killers who roam this country with impunity to keep on killing.
This imperative compels the media not only to closely monitor the ongoing trial of the accused in the Massacre so as to keep the public aware not only of the developments in that process, and to remind it not only of what happened on November 23, 2009, but also to provide the citizenry an awareness of its significance not only to press freedom and the practice of journalism, but also to Philippine society as a whole.

This requires a pro-active commitment to the examination and reporting of the human condition in this time and place beyond the reporting of celebrities and other trivia, the mere reaction to events typical of Philippine mass media, and adherence to the ethical and professional responsibilities of truth-telling and respect for the facts by providing reports and analyses that are as complete as possible and with the contextual information research has found is usually missing in Philippine reportage. The responsibilities of the news media are as they have always been prior to November 23, 2009: to fulfill the fundamental duty not only to explain the world, but to explain it towards changing it. The Ampatuan Massacre was both a reminder of that purpose and among the news media’s most important subjects then, two years ago, as well as now and in the coming years of the trial of the accused planners and perpetrators.

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