THE Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines (Focap) yesterday marked World Press Freedom Day by linking arms with journalists, and and a call to close ranks “at a time when governments have sought to paint the free press as enemies of states to muzzle us and escape accountability.”
“This is not a time to bend and shrink,” said Focap even as it pointed out that it was organized during the Marcos dictatorship. “Focap emerged to fight blatant media censorship and harassment and serve as a force for truth in one of the country’s darkest eras.”
The Association called on journalists to unit “because truth is the bedrock of everything we hold dear as a country and people. When we lose our freedom to report the truth, everyone loses. We lose our dignity. We lose our soul.”
The group said today’s tools for media repression may be different, but Focap as always remains committed to speaking truth to power fearlessly and without compromises. “As the country’s fourth estate and as one of the world’s independent watchdogs, we believe journalists have a critical duty to hold power to account and to uphold democracy at all times, no matter how difficult.”
The National Union of the Journalists of the Philippines also marked World Press Freedom Day with a call for journalists to reflect on media’s role in the preservation and advancement of democracy.
NUJP also called on journalists to rededicate themselves to defending rights and liberties “that we may continue serving our people’s right to know.”
“Let us take courage in the knowledge that no matter how despots strive to stifle freedom of expression and thought, the media, the truth, the people, will outlive them,” reads part of the NUJP statement.
As NUJP marked the World Press Freedom Day, it noted that more than any administration since the unlamented Marcos dictatorship, “never have freedom of the press and of expression been under siege as during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.”
It continued: “Never has any president, Marcos included, openly spearheaded the attacks and vilification of media. We have also seen how he and his minions wield the lie as a weapon against the profession of truth.”
NUJP cited the Duterte administration’s “ouster matrix” which it called “totally false and inane.” It said Duterte has upped the ante and signaled that he would go to “absurd lengths to stifle the independent and critical media.”
“It is sad that he does so with the help of the venal and corrupted within the profession,” said NUJP.
Th College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), the oldest and only existing alliance of campus journalists in the country and in Southeast Asia, appealed for unity to combat what it called as “state-perpetuated violence and all forms of repression that target press freedom and the people’s democratic rights.”
CEGP president Daryl Angelo Baybado said, “World Press Freedom Day gives an avenue to unite all campus journalists and press freedom advocates against the continuing attacks, especially now that we have a President who is afraid of dissent and of the fourth state.”
In 2018, Baybado said, the World Press Freedom Index report of the Reporters Without Borders showed that the Philippines ranked 133rd, six notches below its ranking in 2017. He said that meant a “difficult situation” for journalists to practice their watchdog rule as the fourth estate. The Philippines also got an abuse score of 58.9, ranked 18th among 180 countries evaluated.
CEGP noted that since 1986, more than 200 Filipino journalists have been killed in the exercise of their profession.
“Yet today, journalists are still experiencing numerous attacks and harassment. Hence, the culture of impunity and the elusive justice system adds the oppressors the ascendancy to continue silence the journalists,” CEGP said.
CEGP said it also documented more than 1,000 cases of campus press freedom violations since 2010, all of which are still unresolved.
“But we will not be silenced against these attacks for we know that the power of the media lies from the blazing indignation of the Filipino masses against disinformation and oppression,” said CEGP secretary general Paula Sabrine Janer.
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