by Angelika V. Ortega
Philippine democracy is dying, and I will tell you how it is done.
Five years ago, I sat across a second-year journalism major in her dormitory room as the newly elected chief of state was inaugurated. He had the traditional bravado of a man in his early 70s—hits on the “weaker sex,” likes guns, and brags about his senseless tirades. I will make sure you are dead, he promised, when I catch you with drugs. Maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but within six years, you will die. He made the same commitment to those who had nothing to do with drugs, in which he thoughtfully included newsmen. He called them sons of b***hes. He tagged them as potentially corrupt. He intimidated them. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong, he warned. We trembled in fear.
Four years ago, I sifted through the pages of a local newspaper. It boasted the regular rhetoric of the new state chief. He chastised two major news outlets, one of them baselessly. He cursed them. He called them names more than the term “son of a b***h” could comprehend. He declared them, and the media in general, corrupt. All because of a Renaissance-like photograph. Then he appointed a peddler of fake news to a government post.
Three years ago, I found myself marshaling with reporters of national media agencies in the northeastern part of the Metro. We were flaunting black all over the area, while people were calling us “Dilawan,” if not “bayaran” and biased. It is serious when the media takes it to the streets, someone beside me marveled. He was right. We had no choice: A news correspondent was denied entry to cover an event in the Palace. The license of a renowned news site was revoked. A lawsuit was eventually filed against the head of said site.
Two years ago, I visited a friend who ventured into the field of journalism. His employer company was unfoundedly labeled in a matrix that suggestively aimed to oust the chief of state. The social media pages of his organization were immediately rained down with the chief’s stalwarts, who trumpeted the names with utter belief. Biased. Bayaran. Dilawan. The monikers frequented in a desperate attempt to be true. He was threatened. They told him they would kill him with guns if they saw him. They called him the same names. They cried son of a b***h over and over. He wept.
Last year, I spoke to a friend and former colleague who became jobless. She, along with some of her previous co-workers, had to be terminated from the broadcast giant she worked for following its shutdown. They cried foul. They protested. But the government relentlessly stayed the order.
For years, the freedoms that our ancestors fought for have been threatened, trampled upon, spitted on, and gutted, first by the very shepherd who was supposed to direct his herd away from danger, but repeatedly commanded death instead, next, by the blind sheep.
But no matter how much the rule of democracy thins down and divides us, the press continues to fight back and hold the line and the barricade that our ascendants formed. Amid repeated harassment and pressure, our newsmen, louder than ever, remain, fighting for the truth and holding those in power accountable.
It truly is a tough time to be a journalist, a friend once told me. But he continued to be one. He refused to hide.
Our democracy is our freedoms, and it is dying. If we do not stop shooting the messengers, it might as well be dead.
THE BARRISTER 