EDITORIAL - Slight improvement

From 156th to 140th is a big improvement in ranking for the Philippines in the 2011 Press Freedom Index. Placing 140th, however, is still far from 122nd – the country’s rank before at least 32 media workers died in November 2009 in the Maguindanao massacre.

And placing even 122nd among nearly 180 countries is nothing to crow about for a modern democracy. The 2010 Press Freedom Index, drawn up by the Brussels-based Reporters Without Borders, covered 178 countries. The group lumped the Philippines together with Afghanistan and Pakistan “where violence and impunity persist” against members of the press.

For the past two years, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has also ranked the Philippines behind only Iraq and Somalia in terms of impunity in the killing of media workers. The Philippines is on a list of 13 countries “where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers,” the CPJ said.

The CPJ counts 72 journalists killed in the Philippines since 1992. Of the 46 journalists around the world whose killings were confirmed to have been work-related in 2011, the CPJ counted two from the Philippines. The highest number was recorded in Pakistan, where seven were killed. Five each were recorded in Iraq and Libya; three were recorded in Mexico. Apart from the Philippines, two killings each were recorded in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Brazil, Egypt, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Earlier this month, Filipino tabloid publisher Christopher Guarin became the first journalist in the world to be murdered in 2012. Guarin, who was also a block time radio broadcaster in General Santos City, was shot dead while driving home with his wife and daughter. The gunmen remain at large. That failure to apprehend killers has been blamed for the impunity that fuels similar murders across the country. The problem is still waiting to be addressed.