Protect the truth tellers, protect everyone

The Commission on Human Rights is right to say the public’s right to truth collapses when journalists work under threat, but we have heard variations of that line for years and the gap is still in the follow-through.

If journalist safety is truly a democratic public service, then it deserves the same treatment we demand of other public services: clear standards, published performance, and money attached to the promise.

The country already has a blueprint in the Philippine Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists, yet too many protections remain workshop-level commitments instead of routine, regional practice.

A basic starting point is measurement, because you cannot “strengthen” what you refuse to count in public, region by region, quarter by quarter, with response times and outcomes.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines documented around 135 incidents of attacks and threats against media workers from July 1, 2022 to April 30, 2024, including intimidation, red-tagging, and surveillance, which is not a “few bad cases” problem.

Those numbers should automatically trigger a visible government scorecard: how many reports were received, how many were verified, what assistance was provided, and how many cases actually moved in the justice system.

CHR’s Alisto! Alert Mechanism is one of the few tools that sounds like it was designed for real life, because it lets media workers report threats directly and get assessed for assistance.

Now treat it like emergency response, not a hotline you remember only after something happens, by publishing service standards such as a same-day acknowledgment and a time-bound referral and coordination protocol.

The CHR-PTFoMS memorandum of agreement signed on Aug. 27, 2025 should be judged on whether it shortens that timeline and prevents cases from going cold, not on how often it is cited in speeches.

When coordination stalls, it is usually because nobody owns the failure, so Congress should require annual public reporting on the PPASJ and media safety mechanisms, with budgets and named accountable offices.

Protection also has to mean legal protection, because criminal complaints can be deployed as punishment even before a judge ever rules on truth or malice.

CMFR noted journalists being charged with libel and cyberlibel in that same July 2022 to April 2024 window, and those cases can drain time, money, and courage in newsrooms outside Manila.

CHR’s call to decriminalize libel and cyberlibel is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for irresponsible journalism, but an overdue correction to a system that makes imprisonment part of the bargaining chip.

The Supreme Court upheld cyberlibel in Disini v. Secretary of Justice, which is exactly why Congress has to do the policy work now if it wants to prevent criminal law from becoming a press-management tool.

Digital attacks also need to be treated as violence with consequences, because harassment and surveillance online often come with doxxing, coordinated threats, and the kind of fear that changes how people report.

UNESCO’s global survey with the International Center for Journalists found 73% of women journalists experienced online violence, and it is not hard to see how that reality plays out in local politics coverage and crime reporting here.

If we are serious about protecting women journalists, we need targeted protocols, confidential reporting channels, trauma-informed handling, and newsroom policies that do not quietly “reassign” women away from hard beats to keep the peace.

Finally, press freedom does not survive on bravery alone, because public trust matters, which is why media-citizen councils, when truly independent and community-driven, can resolve grievances without weaponizing the courts.

The workable compromise is simple: build strong, transparent safety systems and fair civil remedies, strengthen self-regulation, and stop using criminal punishment, digital mobs, or state neglect as the default response to scrutiny.