Please, stop killing us!

“Nobody owns life; but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.” WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

By Alex P. Vidal

WE love to travel as journalists. Not as tourists.

Even without sufficient money, journalists can travel around the world for special missions and assignments; and to chronicle international events.

Only a moneyed tourist can circumnavigate the globe for pleasure, rest and recreation.

There are embassies that issue separate visas for journalists and tourists.

During travel, we continue to work; journalists are always “on duty” wherever they go.

The environments from airport to airport, port to port, terminal to terminal are potential sources of news and other juicy items.

People we meet and events we stumble into are rich sources of “flash” reports and feature stories.

For a dyed-in-the-wool newsman, there is an abundance of items to write about everywhere and in whatever circumstance.

A true-blue journalist is sharp, quick and alert for any event. It’s an amazing but thankless job.

Outside the Philippines, journalists are respected and held in high esteem.

Governments and territories around the world, except in countries with high mortality rate for journalists like Iraq, Syria, Algeria and Somalia, recognize the role and importance the media practitioners played in shaping world events.

ADVENTURE

Going around for scoops and investigative reports abroad is also an adventure.

Challenging and nerve-tingling, but we are accorded due courtesy and given privileges, something we can never enjoy as tourists.

Governments recognize our duties and obligations, our responsibilities and missions; and why we are travelling.

They are aware that as catalysts of change and harbingers of progress and development, our movements and activities are motivated by a Tertullian desire to circulate and disseminate newsworthy stories, especially those with public interests, as fast as possible and as comprehensive as they should be.

In other words, we are not enemies but allies.

We are partners in nation building and we act as mirrors of events that unfold in society; we help safeguard public funds from dishonest and rapacious public officials.

We expose anomalies in government and illegal activities in society.

We act as conduits of the voiceless and the oppressed who seek justice; we sometimes assume the role of the “courts of the last resort” for victims of injustices, abuses and neglect.

We are being looked up to as the doyens in the field of mass communication owing to our influence and weapon to sway public opinion.  

SAFER

It’s safer though to cover international events than covering beats in the Philippines.

Filipino journalists assigned to cover the police, military, city hall, capitol, among other beats, are not spared from harassment and violence.

Next to our soldiers and cops, many journalists are killed like animals.

When journalists are murdered, either they are killed in line of duty or because of personal motives like love triangle, vendetta, business rivalry, etc.

In most cases, journalists are murdered to “silence” them or as a retaliatory aggression for an expose or hard-hitting commentary.

Because we are non-combatants, most journalists don’t carry firearms.

In fact, we should never carry any deadly weapon.

Both the National Press Club (NPC) and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) don’t advocate allowing their members to carry guns.

Violence begets violence.

Our pen, after all, is still mightier than the sword, as they used to remind us during our College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) days.

The spate of killings involving crusading, semi-retired and even former journalists in the Philippines has exposed the state’s ineptitude to safeguard members of the Fourth Estate from the enemies of press freedom.

IMPUNITY

The murderers of former Philippine Daily Inquirer correspondent Melinda Magsino must have realized that because of the culture of impunity in the country, killing a journalist would mean all their transgressions and evil deeds were altogether forgotten and their tracks covered forever.

Unless authorities will do something to immediately arrest Magsino’s killers and their masterminds, there’s no guarantee that the statistics on media killings will end with her cold-blooded murder in Batangas.

As community journalists, we are worried and disturbed that the senseless murders of members of Philippine press continued unabated.

We are worried for our colleagues. We are worried for our own selves and our families.

Please stop the violence. Don’t kill us.

We are not the enemies. And we are only doing our job.