Into the storm

By Reyshimar Arguelles

The temporary closure of ABS-CBN courtesy of the “decent” people of the National Telecommunications Commission has opened up discussions on press freedom. Actors, news anchors, and everyone else chiming in with the issue are making the same old pronouncements about protecting free speech — as though free speech hasn’t been under attack for decades.

Who of course can forget Marcos’ murderous regime, the cases lobbed against columnists and radio commentators, the death threats and assassination attempts done on investigative journalists like Melinda Magsino, and the infamous Maguindanao Massacre? Saying that the free press is under attack because a large media corporation has been shot down is an understatement. The free press is always under attack no matter what it does. Even media outlets that refuse to take sides will still be looking into the barrel of a pistol.

At times, being in the Fourth Estate feels like a thankless job. You visit police precincts, run after fire engines, and sit-down during press conferences and city hall and capitol sessions waiting for something quotable to come up. It becomes deliriously repetitive, but you take pride in the fact that you are doing society a service. That should be more than enough to compensate for the real danger that journalists put themselves through.

I know because I was once a part of that world, a world praised just as much as it is maligned. But regardless of how we view the media, we cannot entirely divorce ourselves from the fact that people are always hungry for information, especially in times of crisis.

The most memorable part of my brief career as a news reporter was during the onslaught of supertyphoon Yolanda in November 2013. I was holed up with other reporters at the Provincial Capitol when Yolanda made landfall in the town of Concepcion. The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office was trying to communicate with island barangays, but there was no response. The next day, an aerial surveillance of northern Iloilo yielded horrifying images of entire villages levelled by ferocious winds and storm surges.

I  tagged along with a group of reporters traveling to the north to get a firsthand view of the devastation: entire houses stripped of roofs and walls, bent iron bars, toppled electric posts,  and I swear I saw the flat roof of a gas station flipped upside down and placed on the same exact spot. It felt as though the apocalypse had come — but Yolanda delayed its arrival.

Being able to reach a place that’s reeling from a natural calamity felt surreal to me, but we all had to play a role in that. Relief was pouring into the island of Panay and the media — in its role to promote transparency at a time when anyone could easily profit from the devastation — followed the stories as they happened. It’s hard to imagine a crisis wherein everyone is kept in the dark. And no doubt, the information we provided helped non-government organizations to identify the communities they wanted to reach.

As we can see, the Fourth Estate as a whole is not the kind of villain you can deride. Any attack on this most precious institution is not often because it does its duties religiously. It is often that people feel attacked when the media puts them on the spotlight for issues that require transparency and accountability. But when a storm hits you, it will hit you badly nonetheless.

There is no good or bad media. There’s only a media that makes sure everything is for the betterment of society. Whether its tracking the money trail of corruption or investigating state-sponsored murder or documenting relief efforts in the aftermath of a disaster, the meda is still the very same institution all throughout.