Ellen Tordesillas » Deplorable

By Ellen Tordesillas

I had a long-scheduled lecture at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines on “Online journalism versus print journalism” last Saturday but the students were more interested about last Thursday’s incident at the Manila Peninsula, specially the part when media became suspects for covering the event.

Since the students were post-Marcos babies, I contextualized the deplorable action of the PNP with the situation during the Marcos dictatorship.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility put it eloquently: “Never in the turbulent recent history of the Philippines has any government, including that of Ferdinand Marcos, ever taken into custody members of the media who were on the scene to do their jobs.”

That’s true. I have been a reporter since the Marcos days and have been tear-gassed a number of times during student rallies but never was I brought for questioning and threatened with being handcuffed for doing my job.

CMFR said: “The arrest of the media people who were covering the take-over of the Peninsula Hotel by Senator Antonio Trillanes’ Magdalo group is not only unprecedented. It is also an outrage, and a telling indication of the authoritarian depths into which the Arroyo regime has fallen in its obsession with political dominance. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility condemns this latest attack on the Philippine press as an assault not only on its constitutionally-protected freedom, but also on democracy itself.”

Gloria Arroyo and her minions (I’m so disappointed with PNP Chief Avelino Razon; he had impressed me as a more enlightened police officer) accuse us of “obstructing justice” when we decided to stay put at the hotel. I ask them, did reporters block the path of the fully-armed, fully-masked members of the Special Action Force when they took away Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, Brig. Gen. Danny Lim, and the other Magdalo officers? What obstruction of justice are they talking about?

I decided to stay put in the hotel despite the warning by authorities that they would mount an assault to get the rebel officers because as a journalist my duty is to inform the people as correctly as I could of the unfolding crisis. And I believe that the best and only way I could do it was by being at the Manila Pen where Trillanes, Lim and the other Magdalo soldiers were.

NCR police chief Geary Barias offered a place where reporters could wait for briefing. Why would I allow somebody as partisan as Barias to process for me the information I needed about his enemy target?

Barias betrays the mentality of this government treating media as an extension of its propaganda arm. Those who refuse are considered the enemy.

A friend told me that Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, who was reported to be the one calling the shots in last Thursday’s overkill, announced on TV that from now on, only reporters assigned to a specific beat could cover a specific event.

Hello? Since when has government taken over the editorial duties of news organizations? Beat assignments are internal matters for a media organization. A government official has no business meddling with it. An editor can send a reporter to any event and it’s none of Puno’s business.

All the 30 or so journalists who stayed put at the Manila Pen knew the risks involved. That’s why none of us complained that we were tear-gassed. We tried to protect ourselves from the stinging fumes with wet pieces from the Manila Pen’s linen. It helped but it was really bad. But we did not take that against the authorities. They had to do their job.

During Marcos’ time, every time we covered rallies, we knew we would be tear-gassed like everybody else. That didn’t prevent us from covering those activities. That’s part of the job.

What we object to is to be prevented from doing our job. Last Thursday, that’s what Gloria Arroyo’s minions tried to do with us. For standing firm on our constitutional right of freedom of expression, we were arrested and threatened with being handcuffed like common criminals.

Arroyo is fond of invoking “rule of law.” From the very day she grabbed power in 2001, to her thwarting the will of the people in the 2004 elections, the list of her violations of the law is getting longer than the graft-ridden boulevard named after her father. Last Thursday’s trampling of the rights of journalists is the latest item in the list.

A military official said the prevailing sentiment among Arroyo’s loyalist police and soldiers who watched last Thursday’s incident is that if media continues to be stubborn, they should be prepared to be shot next time.

I’m not exactly shocked by that attitude given the culture of impunity that Arroyo has cultivated under her administration. They see media as an enemy that would expose their destruction of democratic institutions. It is beyond them to appreciate the role of media of empowering the people by delivering accurate information.