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Monday, September 08, 2003
Amante: Dead air
By ISOLDE AMANTE
SIXTEEN years after landing on the cover of Asiaweek, which showed him with a gun in a broadcaster’s booth, radio commentator Juan Porras Pala, 49, was shot dead Saturday night near his home in Davao City.
At least two gunmen pumped four bullets into his chest, one in his left arm and another in his right thigh, according to a MindaNews report.
Pala’s death brought to six the number of Filipino journalists killed so far this year, a record that equals that of Colombia, one of the deadliest places in the world to work as a journalist.
Since 1988, over 50 Colombian journalists have been murdered. The Philippine record is 42 since 1986.
“The incidents all have one thing in common: most of the killers are still at large and are unlikely to be punished,” the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports.
The Philippine situation has so alarmed the IFJ that—two days before Pala’s murder—IFJ president Christopher Warren wrote Malacañang to protest “a disturbing lack of action by the government” on the unsolved murders of media workers here.
Two recent murders prompted Warren’s letter: the ambush on reporter Rico Ramirez in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur on Aug. 20 and the attack on radioman Noel Villarante in Santa Cruz, Laguna a day before that.
Exactly 483 days ago today, Pagadian City journalist Edgar Damalerio died after being shot by a police officer. Suspect Guillermo Wapile was arrested—a rare occurrence in attacks on journalists—but escaped from police custody.
Journalist Carlos H. Conde of Davao writes of the Pala murder: “While it is true that there are still questions surrounding Pala and the nature of his death (he was also a politician who incurred the ire of his opponents, he surrounded himself with bodyguards and firearms, some say he was not exactly a paragon of journalistic virtue, etc.), there is no denying one simple fact: somebody wanted him silenced.”
“His murder and its particular brutality reinforce the idea that, in this country, people who dare to speak out are fair game, that violence is the only response to the power of the word. And if something like this can be done to Pala, who presumably enjoyed a certain amount of protection from the power he derived from broadcasting and politics, then no journalist is safe.”
Here, in the relative peace and quiet of Cebu, journalists pay scant attention to attacks on colleagues elsewhere in the country. And when radio blocktimer Rey Cortes was shot last June, while walking to his car outside the Bureau of Customs, not a few glossed over the assault to say that, well, perhaps media corruption was to blame.
Insulated from the sort of threats our colleagues, particularly in Mindanao, face, our interests have also become alarmingly insular.
We remain unable, for instance, to speak out as one against a bill that will have journalists fined P10,000 to P30,000, or jailed for up to a month for failing to air or publish a reply to “onerous” news items.
Granted, the “tirades in the press” that House Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzalez and Cebu Rep. Clavel Asas-Martinez complained about do exist. But what defenders of House Bill 5774 ignore is that the right to reply is, in fact, honored by nearly all media organizations—-and those who fail can be reined in by existing laws on libel, slander and such.
Considering that these remedies already exist, a right-to-reply law would only be oppressive, yet another claw on government’s already heavy hand. But Cebu’s media workers are too divided by competition, or perhaps too pleased with ourselves to see this bill for the assault on press freedom that it is, and to mount a concerted effort to oppose it.
One can only hope the response will be more impassioned should a more direct attack hit the profession in the future—whether it’s a mayor driving out a press photographer from a public office, or a news subject out to silence a broadcaster for good.
(Check out www.pinoypress.net for more information. For feedback: ida@sunstar.com.ph) |
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