Responsible work, not guns, protects media practitioners
As killings of journalists continue to rise, media practitioners are reminded to always be fair by practicing good journalism.
Red Batario, executive director of the Philippine Center for Community Journalism and Development, said arming journalists is not an assurance for them to be protected from harassment or being killed.
“Journalists are considered neutral but once they are armed, they lose that status,” he told community journalists from different parts of the Visayas during a seminar-workshop on community journalism recently held in
Batario, an official of the International Safety Institute, spoke on how journalists can protect themselves and be safe while in the course of performing their profession. It was the first ever that safety for journalists was included as one of the topics in the seminar-workshop sponsored by the Philippine Press Institute.
He explained that journalists should never carry firearms in the course of their work because this might even invite an attack.
According to him, many journalists are being killed because some did not like what they wrote or said, or “because someone did not like reporters” or simply because “they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Ultimately, it’s the best practice of journalism that is the best protection of journalists,” he said.
Batario said that from 1996 to 2006, not less than 1,000 journalists were killed worldwide and that 657 of them were murdered or killed intentionally.
He noted that in
Batario also gave tips to journalist-participants on how to deal with hostile and dangerous environments, death threats, when arrested or abducted, covering conflict areas, riots, demonstrations or natural catastrophes and industrial accidents. — Wenna A. Berondo/MEEV
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