Editorial: Endangered species

Source: Today newspaper, Philippines
August 4, 2004

Testing the limits of free expression and press freedom is a perilous venture. And nowhere is it more dangerous than in the many small towns throughout the Philippines where such constitutionally guaranteed liberties are not worth the paper they are written on.

Journalists who live and work in Manila and some other cities (but certainly not all) have a great measure of protection. The trouble that follows their killing far exceeds the trouble of leaving them alive. With their comparatively easy access to national media organizations and law-enforcement authorities, newsmen in urban centers worry more about onion-skinned officials and businessmen who try to get back at their press critics by harassing them with multimillion-peso libel suits. Sure, newsmen are at times exasperating, but always it is the good ones that end up dead.

Indeed, it is in the provincial hometowns and boondocks where the democratic commitment to free expression and press freedom faces its real challenge. Assuming any newsman can afford the insurance premium against death by murder, we doubt any insurance company will insure them against that contingency. Forget newsmen in the provinces.

Over the weekend, another hard-hitting radioman literally bit the dust in Ilocos Norte province. The usual "unidentified gunmen" ambushed Roger Mariano in San Nicolas town as he was on his way home after anchoring his nightly talk show on local radio station MBC-dzJC. He was found dead, sprawled on the pavement of the national highway in barangay Barbar.

Investigators recovered numerous spent cartridges from assault rifles at the crime scene, indicating that whoever had Mariano killed bore implacable hatred for him and really wanted him dead. Moreover, they were sending the unmistakable message that a similar fate awaits whoever might be foolhardy enough to take up his crusade against gambling lords.

Mariano reserved his most scathing commentary for jueteng operators, as well as for local officials and police without whose protection the numbers racket syndicates would not be able to operate. He was also reported to be in possession of documents that could link executives of the provincial electric cooperative to irregularities.By simply reviewing what topics Mariano recently took up and the quarters he had denounced, the investigators assigned to solve his murder have good leads. Or at least they should have. But going by the track record of the police in previous killings of journalists, we have little confidence that the slain Ilocos Norte radioman and his family would get justice in the near future or in the long run.

Both the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility agree that Mariano was the 53rd journalist killed in the Philippines since 1986, the year the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was hounded out of Malaca?ang by people power.

This year alone, two other journalists preceded Mariano to the grave. In February, newspaper publisher and radio commentator Ruben Endrinal was killed in Legazpi City. In June, Ely Binoya, a radio commentator of Radyo Natin, was killed in South Cotabato province.

In 2003, seven Filipino journalists were slain in the line of duty. Filipino journalists have become such an endangered species that the Philippines now shares with Colombia, which for years has been racked by cocaine syndicates and Marxist insurgents, the dubious distinction of being one of the most dangerous places in the world for the working press.

In the wake of Ely Binoya's death, Ann Cooper of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, issued a statement where she said: "The Philippines cannot claim to be a country that respects press freedom while journalists are killed with impunity."

Cooper's conclusion has been reinforced once more by the murder of Roger Mariano.