World Press Freedom Day
By:
HILARION “Abe” PAWID
Posted: 10-May-2011 / 1 year 1 week ago
It was Tuesday, the 3rd day of May when World Press Freedom Day was commemorated. Neither fan fair nor celebration except perhaps, the giving away elsewhere of plaques of recognition for exceptional journalism feats.
Press freedom day? It is nothing but an empty rhetoric in the country. It is empty in the sense that the infrastructure protecting the rights of media practitioners has yet to be set-up and institutionalized. And add the need for coming up with a formula that should provide decent and honest wages without compromising the independence of their “pencils”.
Journalists to whom this day is set in their honor take this date like any other. They never celebrate the occasion. It’s just another day.
They may be a special breed with such attitude who can detach themselves and remain impartial to events.
A newsman’s celebration is called for only after the publication of a well-knitted article following a day or days of running after the news. Such revelry is held only in the comfortable company of colleagues in the media with perchance a bottle of wine or liquor to loosen up tongues for jokes and topics other than work. It is an occasion to lessen the work-related stress of the day to keep them young at heart and soul.
Scribes have their own unique manners developed in their work atmospheres. They could be mistaken as weirdoes, nerds, and crazy to be avoided or declared as persona non grata. But in reality journalists could be true friends who have soft spots in their hearts which the public can view in their articles such as calling attention to the causes and harsh realities of poverty, environment protection, political repression, human rights, social injustice, and graft and corruption.
It cannot be avoided if media practitioners, in many ways, may also be suspect of contemptibility. This comes with the public notion that “mainstream journalism is driven by profit, by political interests, often biased, and sometimes inaccurate” to borrow the words of former Communications UP Dean Teodoro.
Yet again it should not be the reason for the killing of media men and women. Since the departure of Marcos and the supposed re-establishment of democracy in l986, over 200 journalists were killed with their bereaved families still seeking justice. The Philippines ranks high in unsolved murders of journalists.
So what’s there to celebrate?
Libel is still a criminal offense. Members of both chambers of Congress continue to ignore a situation of media threading thru the thin lines of criminal libel as they practice their basic rights to freedom of expression.
The proposal to decriminalize it and remove its attendant civil damages seems to remain unnoticed.
Another would be the failure of Congress to enact the Freedom of Information Law that should grant the self-executory right to information guaranteed in the l967 Constitution.
There is this hanging threat by the National Bureau of Investigation to regulate the use of laptops, SIM cards and other apparatus that can access the internet. It’s like breaking into two the pen or pencil of a writer.
Of course, let’s not discount the failure of media itself in policing its ranks.
As it is the manipulative influence of political and economic interests continue to exert conflict on what a journalist should “stand for and uphold”.
“So what’s ‘Press freedom day’, anyway?” - hp
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