Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Carvajal: What price freedom? By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
IT would be rather naïve to think all the slain journalists were killed for the honest exercise of their profession.
Journalists are as human as anybody else and are quite capable of the misdeeds of those in power whose lives they watch.
Power corrupts and if the “pen is mightier than the sword” then the pen can corrupt even more than the sword.
On the other hand, it would be just as naïve to think all journalist victims of extrajudicial killings were killed for betraying the nobility of their chosen profession. I personally would like to believe the majority of those who fell by the sword were really paying the ultimate price in the honest pursuit of journalism’s mission to watch the powerful on behalf of the voiceless and the powerless.
The percentages do not really matter for even if only one journalist is killed for being true to his or her profession, by that much is freedom compromised and with that much more effort must freedom be taken from the hands of those who want to suppress it. Freedom is not a gift that one accepts from the powers that be. Freedom is not a frolic under the sun on a nice day but a determined push through wind and rain in the pursuit of truth.
As Fr. Rod Salazar, SVD aptly put in last Sunday’s Mass with Cebu’s working press, the media must always press for freedom. It was his unique way of expressing the oft repeated caveat that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Indeed, freedom is a continuing struggle and one is only truly free for as long as one dares to be in spite of the odds.
Sinister forces are at work today that threaten to sabotage press freedom. The on-going attack on press freedom is probably not as nakedly blatant as that of the Martial Law variety. Yet, it makes up in deceit and insidiousness what it lacks in naked blatancy and is equally threatening to press freedom, perhaps even more so than during the Martial Law years.
There is a saying that the freedom to swing one’s arms stops where the other person’s nose begins. The relatively free Philippine press, most especially Cebu’s press, has been swinging its arms, hitting some powerful people’s noses.
The question is, will the latter cut their corruption or will they rather cut the arms of the press that bring their corruption to the attention of the public? The second would seem to be the case and the media have their work cut out for them.
While modern communications technology has made it harder for the corrupt in government to escape notice, still there is a lot of watching to do in making those in power responsible and accountable. Press freedom must be in the service of this mission otherwise those who have paid the ultimate price would have died in vain.
