Media Work Beyond Just Being Mere Profession

I thought I have seen the worst and most heinous crime ever since the time of Martial Law in the early 80s up to this time, three decades have passed.  My ‘baptism of fire’ as a budding journalist took place on one “Black Easter” in the early 80s, when unidentified men threw hand grenades into the worshipping throng at San Pedro Cathedral in Davao City instantly killing several people including children and old folks who were celebrating the glory of Easter that turned out to be a disaster.  It was my first assignment then, as I was tasked to come up with feature stories on the victims.  At first I thought, it was an impossible task indeed, but when it came out, so many people were touched by the stories.

Then when the “hamletting” of rural folks became a strategy of the Armed Forces of the Philippines supposedly to “flush out” the rebels from the communities, those of us covering a fact finding mission thought we were done in San Vicente, Laac, a municipality in Davao del Norte.  As we were interviewing folks in the area, we were suddenly fired at, prompting all of us with our Nikon cameras and notebooks to dive into “fox holes” which could only accommodate the family members of each house.  A photo journalist who had no other choice but drop face down by the side of the road was aiming his camera at an approaching APZ and was shooting away.  What he found out after he developed the photos was that he got an empty box of tri-x film right smack in his picture. 

Martial Law Challenge.  Another such heart-stopping coverage was the killing of Fr. Favali by the notorious religious cult called Tadtad (religious fanatics), whom witnesses said displayed cannibalism by eating parts of the spilt brains of the murdered priest scattered on the ground after they shot him dead.  Few hours after we heard about the incident, our group of idealistic young writers and newly trained community media practitioners had decided to chase the story in high spirits, ignoring the dangers that were apparent during that time.

But then, during that time, it never occurred to us that we were treading on dangerous grounds, that what we could be dealing with are people who did not possess sound judgments, who only wanted to kill and that those were members of a fanatical cult that wantonly kills with impunity.  But there we were, unfazed, unafraid, even shouting at the top of our lungs our anger at the perpetrators and those at the helm of national leadership while riding the truck that took us to that most dreaded place.