By ROBY ALAMPAY

Roby Alampay is executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. He may be e-mailed at roby@seapabkk.org.

BANGKOK - The separate killings of a radio commentator and a photojournalist in the Philippines last week brings to ten the total number of newsmen killed in that country since the start of the year. It's a new record. We thought 2003 was bad. Now the body count has been topped and groups monitoring attacks on the media point out that only Iraq-and not even Afghanistan-has seen more journalists killed in action this year.

The toughest challenge for Filipino newsmen, however, isn't arresting their dwindling numbers. It's making people give a damn.

When local politicians, warlords, rebels, and suspected gang leaders began picking off their favorite journalists (particularly radio commentators in the provinces) in January, media advocates routinely pressed for government investigations. When the assassinations continued to mount, they said government must not only investigate: it should share in the blame. After all, since 1986-since the Philippine press was freed from under the dictator Marcos's thumb-nearly 60 newsmen have been killed in action in the Philippines, and not a single person has been convicted or jailed for any of the murders. Journalists decried a "culture of impunity" that a complacent government had allowed to fester.

When the death count breached the high-fifties, the journalists' plaintive call finally became a cry of exasperation. And it was directed at society at large.

"We urge the people to express their disgust," the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) implored in a statement.
The real question though is, are the people in fact disgusted? Are they even afraid?

Well, they should be, but they're clearly apathetic-even calm and rational-about the threats to this species. Many reportedly associate journalists with the lowest life forms on earth.

Fortunately, the journalists' union has arrived at a higher call and the right issue. It is not so much the deaths of journalists that should move us to action, they say, but the entire environment that has clearly become so inhospitable, so intolerant for newsmen and therefore for everybody else. In this light, the murder of newsmen points to a wounding of society itself, and so society as a whole must care.

There's a lesson here for everybody, and not just for Filipinos. The fact is, 2004 is turning out to be the deadliest year for journalists worldwide. The International Federation of Journalists counts more than 100 job-related deaths among newsmen so far this year, 30 more than what the figure was for 2002. The jailing and persecution of journalists, meanwhile, comes to some other horrifying data. Where such attacks on the messengers are mounting, what can be said of life in general?

Despite their fluctuating standing in society, journalists-as journalists everywhere like to say-are canaries in the mines.

It's an unfortunate metaphor for two reasons:

One, it's true. Newsmen, by their very presence and however grating, are indicators of democracy, tolerance, civil liberties, rule of law, and overall quality of life. Thus they are always among the first to perish in any adverse change in the climate. Where they find their voices weakened and poisoned-by whatever or by whoever-chances are that freedom, transparency, good governance, and human rights are themselves suffering and dying a slow death.

The second reason this metaphor is unfortunate, however, is because it's distracting. It's narcissistic. It invites cynicism where appreciation is what's needed.

Canaries?! the unmoved public scoffs. Try frogs, you warty, self-important freaks! Go ahead and croak!
Ouch.

But speaking of frogs.

They're slimy. They're disgusting. And have you ever heard thousands of frogs bloating their chests and egos and broadcasting their virility all at the same time? They're absolutely irritating. Just like you-know-what.

But consider one thing you've learned by now, which is that if you knew how the world works, you'd want a frog in your pond. You'd want more than one in your neck of the woods. Yes, if you were really true to your dreams for your children, you'd fight for frogs even though, to be sure, you still wouldn't want your child to be one, be called one, live like one, kiss one, or even touch one. If you cared for the Earth, and really cared for the future you'd want to wake up in tomorrow, why, you'd make your environment safe for frogs, those chirping, barking, rr-rribbiting keystone species whose cacophony, like the hourly news, tells us the temperature, the climate, and livability of our world-not always reliably, not always agreeably, but their very noise is reassuring. Like a canary in the mines.

Absence of noise should upset us. A silent night should make us wonder what's in store tomorrow, just as a silent town should make us wonder what has caused all the doors to be closed, all the windows to be shuttered, all the streets to be empty.
There are towns in the Philippines where to be a journalist is to volunteer to test the danger in the air. There are towns like that all over the world, where journalists are endangered not so much by bullets as an environment whose steadily rising heat everyone has learned to tolerate. All over the world, many journalists have paid with their lives to deliver and be the news people need to run, to fight, or at least give a damn. To ignore their lament is to risk being slowly boiled alive.