SENATOR Grace Poe said the strafing incident at the house of a local radio broadcaster in Talisay City, Negros Occidental on Wednesday is deplorable and should not go unpunished.
Poe, in a statement on Friday, said members of the Fourth Estate should be allowed to do their job of offering truthful information to the public and providing a check on the bureaucracy, which is critical in a democracy.
Threatening or harassing them with this cowardly act will suffocate the truth and freedom of the press, she added.
The senator urged the authorities to get to the bottom of the incident.
On September 19, unidentified motorcycle-riding armed men strafed the house of Rey Siason, one of the anchormen of Muews Radio. Nobody was hurt in the incident.
Police recovered from the scene a fired bullet and seven bullet fragments of .45 caliber pistol.
Siason said he started to receive death threats in 2017.
The Negros Press Club (NPC) and National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)-Bacolod chapter earlier condemned the attack against Siason and called on the authorities to investigate the incident.
In a press statement, Ka JB Regalado, spokesperson of the Leonardo Panaligan Command of the New People’s Army (NPA) also condemned the attack against the radio broadcaster.
The rebel group also urged the police to conduct a thorough investigation on the incident to give justice to Siason.
Regalado also said they will conduct a separate investigation on the matter.
They are also calling to stop media repression and respect press freedom.