Month: October 2019

Response during the awarding of the 2019 Titus Brandsma Press Freedom Award

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I am more than honored at being the recipient of the 2019  Titus Brandsma press freedom award. I am accepting it in behalf of the many journalists across the country who, despite physical attacks, death threats, censorship attempts,  bans from coverage, whimsical libel suits, and red-baiting continue the necessary task of seeking the truth and reporting it. Most of all am I accepting it in memory of the 165 journalists and media workers who have been killed in this country since 1986 because of their work, among them the 32 killed in the 2009 Ampatuan massacre, the tenth anniversary of which will be on November 23. They deserve the honor more than I do:  press freedom is best defended and enriched by journalists’ practicing it and refusing to be silent or silenced.

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Combating Disinformation: Beyond Truth-telling

Luis V. Teodoro
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Truth-telling and accuracy are the fundamental ethical and professional commitments of the alternative press and media in furtherance of the people’s right to know. Truth telling is crucial to the journalistic task of developing among the media audiences the subjective readiness for the changes in society that objective reality so patently demonstrates are needed. Precisely because those in the alternative media are so engaged, they have been harassed, threatened, physically assaulted, and red-baited.

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No win situation

Rodrigo Duterte and Oscar Albayalde
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Not only the credibility of the Duterte regime is at stake in the scandal over the alleged appropriation and sale by 13 “ninja cops” of illegal drugs they had confiscated during an anti-drug operation, as well as resigned Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Oscar Albayalde’s supposedly preventing their dismissal from the service.  On the block as well is whether the PNP should continue as the lead organization in that “war”— or should have even been so designated at all.

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Fact-resistant fiddler

Duterte and Panelo
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It took him nearly four hours to make it to Malacanang from New Manila, Quezon City. He lives in Marikina, and if he had started from there it would have taken him an additional hour for a total commute time of five hours. But Duterte Spokesperson Salvador Panelo still refused to admit that there’s a transportation and traffic crisis in the National Capital Region (NCR).

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Greed unlimited

Tito Sotto, Alan Cayetano, and Rodrigo Duterte
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Congress is supposed to control the purse strings in the Philippine system. But because the Constitution arms him with vast powers as head of a highly centralized government, it is the President who has the biggest say in how much of the national budget an office, including his own, will get each year.

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