On the Maguindanao massacre, impunity and the role of media in a supposed democracy
Kung wala kayang mga mamamahayag na kasamang pinatay sa tinaguriang Ampatuan Massacre, ganoon din kaya ang lebel ng interes ng publiko at media hype tungkol dito? O ituturing lang na isa na namang ordinaryong patayan? Na kapag naglao’y agad ding makakalimutan? Tingnan mo ang nangyari sa Quirino Grandstand Hostage Tragedy, hanggang ngayon, wala pa ding nananagot. E paano kaya, mabuti naman at hindi, kung may isa o dalawang mamamahayag na nasa loob ng bus na iyon? Ano sa tingin mo?
Alalahanin ang mga namatay hindi lamang dahil may mga kasamang mamamahayag na namatay. Alalahanin dahil mga kapwa natin tao, mga kapwa natin Pilipino, ang nagbuwis ng buhay para sa pansariling interes ng iilan.
Wakasan ang kultura ng impunity. E ano bang Tagalog sa impunity? Ewan. Ito na lang siguro at mas madaling maiintindihan ng mga kinauukulan:
Punyeta!
Hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima ng mabagal at kawalang hustisya!
- Mga bagay na napagtanto sa pagtambay sa Twitter
Emphasis on the first paragraph, mine. And apologies John but I disagree.
While I may have read and heard that opinion a lot of times since the massacre happened two years ago, I think it is a perspective which lack the appreciation of the role of the press in a democracy.
As a former journalist who used to report from Mindanao, I can tell you that even if there were no journalists involved in the massacre, the story would still have been reported by Mindanao journalists. Whether or not it would have been noticed by the national media organizations in Manila, and its coverage sustained, would depend on the trends or moods of the people in the national capital.
Take for example a tragedy least known in Luzon but very much widely reported in Mindanao and the Visayas: the Hubangon flash flood of 2001. When the flash flood and land slide hit Hubangon in Camiguin Island, more than 300 were killed and hundreds more were missing. This same storm also caused over a hundred deaths in nearby islands in the Visayan sea.
The disaster hit the headlines of the regional, national and even international press. But when news of Nida Blanca’s death, national media programs suddenly shifted their focus from the disaster that befell the island-province. All of a sudden, the national media forgot about the deaths of hundreds of Filipinos in far away Camiguin. And I bet, very few in the younger generation of Filipinos have actually heard of what happened to Hubangon.
From experience I would say that how newsrooms evaluate which stories to air and which to shelf, or as they say it in the newsrooms, embargo, largely also depends on what is perceived by some senior desk editors, producers and other executives as in the public’s interest. And in some cases, there are stories which are aired because they fit social trends or uso in the national capital.
The Maguindanao massacre should be viewed not only as a brutal mass murder of innocent civilians by armed agents of local politicians but also as the state of disrepair of our democracy.
I have been to several gatherings which talked about strengthening democracy and empowering the people and all of these have emphasized the important role of the press. And all those events have taught me that the measure of the health of a democracy is the state of being of its media. Which brings me to my second point…
It is the right of citizens to demand quality and truthful reportage from the media. The people and media must work hand in hand to, as what I said in an earlier post, check the excesses of the government. In a democratic society, media organizations, acting on behalf of the people, are expected to uncover the suspicious acts of its public officials, uncover shady deals and espouse the issues of the least, oppressed and forgotten segments of the population.
In a genuine democracy, the freedom of the press goes hand in hand with the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech. This means that the extent of the freedom of the press is the measure of the extent by which the citizens in a state can freely express themselves.
If media practitioners in a supposedly democratic country are silenced by the gun, the goons or the gold, then there is a culture of impunity in that country. Impunity, which is the state by which certain individuals are exempt from punishment, can be loosely translated in our languages as naghahahariharian in Tagalog and hawud in Cebuano. And yes, true enough, there are certain areas in the country where there are political families na naghahahariharian and mga hawud kaayo.
The Maguindanao massacre is proof that there are certain groups in the country who think that they are above the law. And whatever they do, even to members of the media who can divulge their acts to the rest of the world, is beyond reproach or penalties imposed by law. That such a massacre happened in a supposedly republican democracy should challenge us to look closely at our social institutions and ask if they mirror the ideals supposedly dominant in a democratic society.
