“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.
