Journalists risk life for the truth

JOURNALISTS, writers, reporters and commentators will have to curb their passion for speaking and exposing the truth if they want to live. Too many end up dead, silence their only companion.

That is just the way it is in the Philippines and elsewhere. More than 146 journalists have been assassinated since 1986.

November 23, 2017 was the 8th anniversary of the mass murder of 58 Filipinos, 32 of them journalists, in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province. The Maguindanao massacre was the single worst violent assault on journalists, carried out by members of a powerful political family. But no one has been convicted for the heinous crime.

The sheer audacity of politicians or corrupt business personalities in quelling the truth and the blind power behind the greed and killing of journalists is outrageous.

Journalists are ordinary people with a story to tell. They risk their lives in exposing the truth. Exposing what is corrupt, challenging the seat of political power has dire consequences. No vengeance is as fierce as that of a corrupt politician exposed, a shady business corporation laid bare. No ignorance is as painful as an uninformed and uncaring public.

The killings go on to this day and the freedom of the press is at stake as some politicians try to control the message and cover up the truth about their inadequacies and wrongdoings. The task of the media is to report the facts, bring to the people the truth about the achievements, success and the failure and wrongdoings of government and the corporate world. That is at the heart of a democracy. Tyranny is the alternative, and it descends like a dark cold cloud of threats and intimidation.

Media practitioners can be compliant, cowardly or courageous. Sometimes, the powerful accuse some journalists of publishing fake news when in fact it is the truth.

- ability to taxpayers who pay billions personal bank accounts as we have seen so many times in the past. It was the media that exposed the politicians who used fake NGOs to steal billions of pesos of government funds for their personal use. The Ombudsman is presently trying their cases.

Media needs its freedom to be able to live up to its role to tell the truth, which is essential to praise or question the policies and power of government. Without this freedom, there would be no institution or individual or group brave enough to expose corruption in government.

If evil persists, human rights will continue to be abused and the national economy will be damaged as it was during the Marcos regime. President Ferdinand Marcos closed newspapers and radio stations and controlled all the media and he plundered at will. Those who opposed him paid with their lives.

In the Philippines, violence against journalists is frequently the response to media exposés of wrongdoing and corrupt practices. As many as 42 journalists have been assassinated since 2007 and no one has been convicted for these deaths. The killers act with impunity and get away with murder. In the 2017 Global Impunity Index of the New York- based watchdog Committee to Project Journalists ( CPJ), the Philippines dropped from fourth to fifth place in the list of countries most dangerous to journalists.

Turkey is the jailer of the most journalists. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrested many journalists and charged them with crimes to silence their critical voices. The Stockholm Center for Freedom said that Erdogan has jailed 240 journalists since May 12, 2017.

So why do powerful government to silence journalists as happened to the dedicated Maltese writer Caruana Galizia? She was killed when a bomb hidden under her car exploded. The Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was suing the journalist over her allegations of corruption. Three suspects have been arrested but the mastermind has not been named.

have the power to silence journalists. They can use bombs, bullets, threats of incarceration and false charges. Yet one well-placed outspoken journalist armed with the truth and who has evidence of corruption can also be a powerful bomb. The truth can bring down the corrupt politician, business tycoon or powerful people as seen in the “#Metoo” movement. That is why investigative journalists of integrity are a threat to the wrongdoers in society. Journalists need protection and the freedom to speak and write the truth and tell it as it is.