Journalists from all over the country celebrated National Press Freedom Day last Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. Here, the Cebu Citizens-Press Council, at the MBF Cebu Press Center, held a forum on the tired but still raging issue of media harassment and killings.
Ariel Sebellino, executive director of the Philippine Press Institute, flew from Manila for the event and detailed challenges facing the whole industry. Atty. Maria G-Ree Calinawan, regional chief of the Public Attorney’s Office, discussed legal services for victims.
But it was two journalists – Rico Osmeña of Cebu and Josie Serseña of Ormoc – who provided the milieu.
Osmeña, last Dec. 16, 2021, survived two serious gunshot wounds that he believes came from an assassin paid by parties affected by his exposé on smuggled vegetables. Up to now, neither assailant nor mastermind has been identified or indicted.
Serseña, for her part, was arrested and detained on the 5th of July 2024 and then made to strip naked for a purported physical exam. Her fault: failing to re-appear in a hearing she got called as witness because she didn’t get the summons.
To me, however, the narrative that provides the grittiest context to the forum was the menacing threat Cebu City Vice Mayor and self-styled “mayor of the night” Tomas Osmeña gave a young lady reporter on the eve of National Press Freedom Day.
“It’s none of your fu*king business,” he gnarled at the journalist whose only fault, it seems, was to relay a question and then solicit comment on why it was Osmeña, not Mayor Nestor Archival, who announced that City Hall now has a new city treasurer.
The whole thing was caught on video, and both it and a transcript of the tense exchange have made the rounds among other media practitioners outside of City Hall.
Compelling as the video was, the menacing aspect of the exchange is found on the transcript: “Are you questioning me? Don’t play that game with me. I can blacklist you in my office.”
The veneer of civility that Tomas Osmeña impressed upon voters during the campaign period, via carefully manufactured socmed videos of him having refined conversations with people in schools and other gatherings, vanished.
And instead, the new generation of journalists covering City Hall, and by extension the public that they serve, got a truer sense of the man.
Journalists covering City Hall have agreed to not name the lady reporter in their stories of the incident. One told me that their reason was fear of escalating the issue and of Osmeña making his threat real.
Their reason is not without basis. Osmeña banned journalists he didn’t like from his daily press conferences when he was mayor from 2001 to 2010. On May 5, 2003, he had a news photographer kicked out of his office. Bodyguards escorted the lensman to the elevator.
Threats directed at the media – limiting their access to information as punishment for questions that make a source uncomfortable are as debilitating as threats of bodily harm and have no place in a system of government that depends upon informed citizen participation.
Democracy is alive, Osmeña says whenever asked about his public disagreements with Mayor Archival. This makes half sense. Democracy is alive when people are allowed to express dissent. It’s not much of a democracy if dissent is allowed only when Osmeña is dissenting.
This is exactly the entire ethos of celebrating National Press Freedom Day – a celebration provided by law, Republic Act 11699 – that, in fact, requires all government agencies to join press freedom activities and for schools to talk about the importance of the press, media rights and responsibilities and the need to eliminate all forms of media violence.
The media should be safe from threats because of the foundational role they have in democracy. A free press is essential for uncovering facts, verifying claims and holding those in power accountable. Threatening the media undermines the media’s ability to pursue truth independently.
Journalists serve the public, not the government, and especially not temporary stewards of government office like the honorable mayor-of-the-night. Their questions, uncomfortable from time to time, enable informed discourse and democratic debate.
However, when a journalist is threatened, human as he or she is, that journalist can be coerced into serving instead the interest of the one strong-arming, if only to avert harm. Hard questions no longer get asked if only to ensure the reporter a seat in the next presscon.
Moreover, beyond just delivering the news, journalists are independent monitors of power. It is their role to scrutinize those in authority. Threats compromise this independence and open pathways for abuse of power.
Silencing or intimidating the press stifles dissent and narrows the space for informed discourse and decision-making.