As a practicing journalist, as an editor of the country's most awarded environmental community newspaper, an active partner of the Center for Community Journalism and Development, the Center for Media Freedom andResponsibility, the Philippine Press Institute, and the BIMP-EAGA Media and Communicators Association, I join our fellow media practitioners tonight in condemning the excessive show of force of the Arroyo administration in keeping the Manila Peninsula standoff under wraps. I urge all my friends in this group to speak up to their colleagues and all members of the Philippine and worldwide community of freedom loving individuals about this unprecedented maltreatment of professional media practitioners who were arrested and brought to Bicutan, just because they happened to be in Manila Peninsula hotel doing their jobs.
While we may have biases, I know that we are always expected to maintain objectivity even when we come face to face with issues like this.
But tonight, I simply have to speak up if not for those who were actually arrested, but for my fellow media practitioners who are toiling in the provinces far away from the network support of bigger media organizations.
What happened to our fellow media practitioners tonight was unprecedented since EDSA 86.
If this could happen to colleagues who are working for manila-based and foreign-based news organizations, what sort of protection can community journalists depend on when they come to the same situation covering police and military stories in the provinces? To what recourse will we run to?
