Cebu celebrates 14th Press Freedom Week

The 14th Cebu Press Freedom Week reeled off yesterday with the traditional Freedom Walk from the Cebu Business Park all the way to the Provincial Capitol followed by a Holy Mass and the Miss Cebu Press Freedom search (the selection of which actually started last Saturday), the usual fun and games and entertainment galore, which through the years have grown into operatic or even cinematic proportions, and yes, a basketball tournament. But Cebu’s celebration of Press Freedom Week isn’t just fun and games, there are forums on major issues relating to the media, like those laws that would decriminalize libel or the proposed right to reply act.

The convenor for this year’s 14th Press Freedom Week is The Freeman and today all the three Cebu-based newspapers, The Freeman, SunStar Daily and Cebu Daily News, will feature a pooled editorial pertaining to our constitutional right to the freedom of speech. With the permission of The Freeman editor Jerry Tundag, I’m joining this pooled editorial for the first time in the hope that our Manila counterparts might also join in the future.

Media at a Crossroads

Media practitioners the world over never have any illusions that journalism would be a walk in the park. Those lured by tales of glory and grace are soon made wise by a reality quite different from expectations once they try the craft. To be sure, the practice is exciting. It can even get quite glamorous for some. For a lucky few, it can be lucrative enough to ensure comfort.

For an even fewer handful, journalism can be a source of real power and influence. But for the most part, professional journalism is taxing and demanding. It takes away so much of one’s self, of one’s personal life. To just be able to successfully juggle one and the other is an extremely rare achievement, one that truly gratifies and satisfies. Beyond these realities, however, journalists in contemporary times in the Philippines are finding themselves confronted with even harsher realities than their colleagues in other countries will probably have to face in their lifetimes.

Journalists in the Philippines are actually under attack by those who feel journalism has become an interference, rather than a solace. To say we are second to Iraq as a dangerous place for journalists is an understatement, considering that that unfortunate country is at war. But we are not just targets for physical violence. We are now also in the crosshairs of an even more ominous assault taking shape not in the perverted mind of an assassin but in the calculated scheming of honorable representatives of the people in Congress. The Right to Reply bill now in the process of legislation is even more chilling than the threat of direct physical assault.

For while murder is a crime, this one is a subliminal bullet coated with the mantle of legislated legality. Physical violence may silence individual journalists. But legislated means of assault, such as the Right to Reply bill, will consequently kill the institution of journalism itself if enacted into law, whether or not the intention is really to kill it or not.

Yet, the silencing of journalists, whether by murder or by legal fiat, is but a symptom of an even greater and more serious threat against journalism, one that gnaws at its heart from the inside. This disease is the growing confusion among media practitioners regarding their own freedoms and the extent to which they apply. Many journalists now actually believe a press card shields them from most, if not all, conventional and legal applications.

It has become increasingly tempting to many of us to assume self-righteous and arbitrary postures even on matters that are beyond our authority and competence. Hence, we are finding ourselves more frequently in the story instead of being outside it and just telling it as it is.

And because many are becoming manipulators of events and instigators of actions instead of being plain chroniclers of the times, we first become judges and then condemners. In this way we become hostile participants of life instead of serving as shepherds of enlightenment. Humanity is one vast cauldron of differences. Some may take our shifting positions with quiet dignity, others with near-breaking-point patience. But there will always be those who will not take it sitting down, and those who sugarcoat the poison.

It is no accident that most killings happen in areas where there is lesser scrutiny on the professional conduct of mediamen. And it is no surprise that politicians, whose reputations are magnets for critical media assaults, would lead the legal reprisals against the press.

We are at a crossroads. We can opt to remain sanctimonious. Or we can take a closer look at ourselves. Remember, that when we say nobody is perfect, that also includes all of us. And that the greatest story we can ever tell is ultimately just the truth about our own selves.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.