Journalism remains high-risk job
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila
As editors and publishers of community newspapers were meeting in Manila early this week, they received the shocking news that another of their members was gunned down on Monday evening in Pagadian City.
The victim was Edgar Damalerio, managing editor of the weekly newspaper Zamboanga Scribe and commentator of radio station dxKP. He was the 38th journalist killed in the Philippines in the past 15 years, a casualty rate that makes us a high-risk country for journalists.
The Philippine Press Institute (PPI), the ever-vigilant guardian of press freedom in the country, was quick to condemn the killing and to point that none of the previous killings had been solved. According to reports, Damalerio was shot by two unidentified people, ironically on a spot just about 300 meters from the city's police headquarters.
The assassins struck after Damalerio had waged a campaign in his newspaper column and radio program against corruption by city and police officials whom he attacked for failure to curb illegal drug trafficking and killings and car thefts in the city and Zamboanga del Sur.
The fact that most of the journalists who were killed during the past 15 years were in the community press reflects the power of provincial political warlords and the weakness of the local press relative to the outspoken metropolitan media, which are often the model for aggressive media campaigns in the provinces.
That community journalists continue to denounce and expose venalities in local governments with great risk to their lives is a tribute to their zeal for their vocation. They therefore need the help of police authorities to determine responsibility for media killings, given that provincial politicians have close association with the police.
During the past two years, more than 50 journalists had been killed while covering violent conflicts. Such deaths were not the result of war's accident but the outcome "of deliberate targeting of journalists by those seeking to prevent media exposure of their criminal, corrupt or terrorist activities," the conference pointed out. Casualties of violence on Filipino journalists are more a result of terrorism by those seeking to cover up venalities than they are of being caught in the crossfire of combatants in war.
The principle which drives journalists, whether community- based or Manila-based, to unearth venalities is that only by disclosure by an independent press, can the press promote good governance. There is no dispute over this principle, but in practice, journalists have to pay a high price -- including their lives -- in pursuing press investigation projects.
Given these choices, we should be expecting media people being gunned down either by political terrorists or by combatants in wars who cannot stand the sight of nosey reporters telling their governments about how the war is going on.