EDITORIAL: Damocles’ sword over journalists
Here or elsewhere, journalists can’t catch a break.
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At least 547 media practitioners around the world welcomed New Year’s Day behind bars, according to a year-end report of French press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières or RSF). They were among the 779 journalists from 45 countries jailed or imprisoned at one point in 2023, with the latter serving sentences ranging from a week to 20 years, the report showed.
Not surprisingly, two hailed from the Philippines: Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a Tacloban community journalist battling a nonbailable charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, and broadcaster Jose Rizal Pajares of Visayas-based Radyo Natin, who spent two days in detention in August but is now out on bail, facing a criminal complaint for unauthorized access to the police blotter.
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Truth-telling profession
As everyone knows, the threats facing journalists, especially in the Philippines, are not limited to imprisonment, and there are certainly far more serious cases, such as killing, torture, and harassment, of which our history is replete with examples dating back to the Marcos dictatorship and recent administrations.
But make no mistake about it—detention is not any less chilling or harmful to the truth-telling profession. The act might even be more insidious, as a result of the kind of message it sends to both purveyors and consumers of news, when media workers are punished like ordinary criminals for performing their jobs.
“Each journalist in prison is by definition a journalist prevented from working,” said RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire, adding: “It’s also a journalist who will be intimidated in the future. And it’s hundreds or even thousands of colleagues feeling a threat hanging over their head.”
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