Journalism now seen as a dangerous profession

We have been writing a column for more than 50 years now and we never imagined that it would one day be classified as a dangerous profession. During the Japanese times and the Marcos dictatorship there was no freedom of the press. People who were known to be against the Marcos regime were simply not given the permission to operate a newspaper and newspapers knew that their licenses to operate would be revoked if they allowed their editors or reporters to write against the dictatorial rule.

We vividly recall that there was even a time when President Marcos literally conducted a mock presidential elections. That was done to avoid the world-wide criticism that he was a dictator and not a duly-elected democratic president. He ran against Alejo Santos and issued a decree that all Filipinos of voting age had to vote. Half of the nation did not bother to vote. They knew it was a mock election so they did not waste their time going to the polls. No one remembers, but I was the only person arrested and charged for not voting. I appeared in court before Judge Consuelo M. Ynares Santiago and to my surprise, President Diosdado Macapagal and Sen. Francisco "Soc" Rodrigo and other prominent lawyers were there volunteering to depend me. Instead of adopting a legal defense, I merely declared that the compulsion to vote could only come from a dictatorial rule and added that the duty not to vote in a mock election came from God. I had to suppress my tears when Judge Ynares Santiago ruled in my favor. She is, by the way, now Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now, we are under a democratic regime and sad to say, the Philippines is now considered to be the second most dangerous place for practicing journalists. We really often read about journalists being killed but they are journalists from remote areas of the country and it is never clear whether they were slain because they exposed a public official or committed libel against a private individual or worst, they were using their profession to blackmail innocent persons.

It would be good if a study was conducted and the facts on the killings of our journalists were made clear. As I said, I have been a practicing journalist for half a century and I have never felt that my life was under threat for anything that I ever wrote. The incident I mentioned during the Marcos regime was about my not voting and had nothing to do with my writing, as there was no press freedom then.

We are really concerned with the recent killings of journalists. What we want clear is to know whether they died for freedom of the press or abuse of the sacred freedom.