139th Filipino journalist enshrined in US memorial

FUNERAL PROTEST Journalists carry the coffin of slain tabloid reporter Ruby Garcia in this photo taken in April 2014. INQUIRER PHOTO

Another slain Filipino journalist will be enshrined in a memorial for murdered media workers in Washington on Monday, a testament to the perils of practicing the media profession in a country that prides itself for having one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia.

The name of Ruby Garcia, who was shot dead in front of her 10-year-old granddaughter in their home in Bacoor City, Cavite province, on April 6 last year will be engraved on the Journalists Wall as part of the Newseum Institute’s annual rededication for individuals who offered their lives in the pursuit of their profession.

Garcia was among the 14 journalists who were chosen by the US-based group to represent more than 80 of their colleagues who died in different parts of the world last year.

She will be the 139th Filipino whose name will be etched on the Journalists Wall, a two-story glass panel that also serves as a reminder of the hazards of reporting the news.

Garcia was one of the 26 reporters killed since President Aquino was sworn into office in 2010. She was also one of the 166 journalists murdered after the fall of strongman Ferdinand Marcos via the popular Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986.

Despite pressure from local and international media and human rights groups, Garcia’s murder has remained unsolved, highlighting the Philippine government’s lackadaisical efforts in resolving media killings.

Dangerous profession

Gene Policinski, Newseum’s chief operating officer, said the towering glass memorial, which contains the names of more than 2,200 reporters, photographers, broadcasters and news crew members who died in the line of duty since 1837, was also a proof “that journalism is a very dangerous profession.”

“The Journalists Memorial reminds us of the risks taken by journalists around the world to gather the news,” Policinski said in a statement posted on the Newseum’s website.

“Journalists face injury and threats, and some [make] the ultimate sacrifice to hold governments and others accountable. The memorial serves each day to remind the world of their work and their sacrifice,” he said.

The yearly rededication also coincided with the group’s worldwide public awareness campaign, dubbed #WithoutNews, to drumbeat the efforts to end the harassment and threats against journalists.

Newseum said the online exhibit of the front pages of about 1,200 newspapers around the world, which regularly sent copies of their newspapers to its website, including the Inquirer, would be “blacked out.”

“[T]heir text [will be] replaced with the Twitter hashtag #WithoutNews as we pause to rededicate the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial,” Newseum said in an e-mail to the Inquirer.

Rowena Paraan, chair of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), said Garcia’s inclusion in the memorial wall was a slap in the face of Aquino, who won the presidency via his anticorruption slogan of “daang matuwid” (straight path) and who had promised to work for the passage of the freedom of information (FOI) bill.

Speaking with the Inquirer, Paraan said the Aquino administration had miserably failed in bringing justice to the families of slain journalists and in addressing the problem of media killings.

“Nothing,” she replied bluntly when asked what the President had done in the campaign to end the murder of journalists. “Nothing in the sense that none of the masterminds (behind the killings) was prosecuted under the Aquino administration.”

Five years after he set foot in Malacañang as the country’s 15th President, Aquino failed to send a clear and unequivocal warning to those behind the killings that they would be made to account for their misdeeds, Paraan said.

She also lamented how law-enforcement agencies had opted to look first for other reasons why journalists were being killed, such as personal disputes or even land row, instead of determining the possibility that the killings were work-related.

“We did not see the President’s sincerity to solve the murders. And this is only about the killings of journalists. If you look at the killings of other sectors, the failure is more obvious,” Paraan said.

Berating journalists

Worse, she said, Aquino’s penchant for berating members of the media during his speeches, including in events where he spoke before a group of journalists, to complain what he perceived as “shortcomings” of the so-called Fourth Estate did not help in putting an end to violence against media members.

This cavalier attitude of the President toward the media, she said, only dangerously bred the same kind of behavior of politicians and other public officials who abhor being criticized by the press for their wrongdoing.

Paraan, whose group has been documenting cases of violence against journalists since 1986, said it was also regrettable that Aquino found time to face members of the Japan National Press Club during his state visit to Tokyo last week, but had consistently turned down the NUJP’s request for a meeting.

She said her group and other media organizations had been wanting to sit down with the President to discuss security issues besetting journalists, particularly those based in the provinces who are the most vulnerable to threats.

Instead of facing the NUJP, she said, the President had sent his representatives to the meetings who could not give them definite answers to their concerns.

Among Aquino’s Cabinet members, only Justice Secretary Leila de Lima had been consistently meeting with them to discuss updates on the cases of murdered journalists, according to Paraan.

However, she said, De Lima could not assure them of the government’s solid support on certain issues since she was just a subordinate of the President.

Superbody’s silence

To underscore the Aquino administration’s failure to address media killings, Paraan said the NUJP had yet to hear anything from the “superbody” that the President had created to oversee the prosecution of those responsible for the deaths of journalists.

“Even Secretary De Lima could not give us anything new in their investigation,” she said.

“He’s been in office for five years. I don’t think he’s had any dialogue with journalists’ groups about media killings or even the FOI bill.”

Paraan said Aquino’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to pass the FOI bill was “already a telling indictment of the sincerity of the Aquino administration” to protect the journalists.

She noted that many of the slain journalists were killed after exposing corruption and other irregularities involving government officials.

She said violence and intimidation against members of the media could have been avoided had the government institutionalized a way for people to freely access information to pertinent issues affecting their lives.

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