O TEMPORA! O mores! Cicero, indeed: How times, how customs have changed.
Case in point: Rappler’s Pampanga stringer files complaint over surveillance, cyber harassment:
MANILA, Philippines – Rappler’s Pampanga stringer Joann Manabat on Wednesday, May 10, filed a complaint with the Philippine National Police (PNP) Anti-Cybercrime group in Camp Julian Olivas, Pampanga, after she was surveilled during a Labor Day protest on May 1 and then contacted on Messenger by someone claiming to be with the military.
Manabat told Rappler that at around 10:50 pm on May 1, someone using the name Jero Haiden Tenorio sent three photos of her via Facebook Messenger. The photos were taken while Manabat was covering the protest rally.
The sender claimed to be from the military, and said he wanted to get to know Manabat and assist her in getting scoops in return for friendship.
The journalist said the photos showed her covering the Workers Alliance of Region III Labor Day rally near the roundabout at San Nicolas Public Market in Angeles City…
Fact is: Surveillance of journalists in protest rallies has always been par for the course for mediamen on one hand, and part and parcel of so-called intel ops of the military on the other. This senior’s generation of journos never made any bones about camera-toting plainclothes cops and ISAFP operatives, not to mention the US Air Force’s OSI, infiltrating the ranks of both rallyists and media in every protest demonstration at the gates of Clark Air Force Base during its American occupation.
Why, we even had fun posing before and making faces at their cameras. No big deal to us, even when a photographer friend in the USAF told us of our blown-up photos at the OSI office. OSI, by the way, is acronym for Office of Special Investigation. To be fair to these Yanks, derogatory dossiers on us notwithstanding, we were allowed access to Clark for coverage. But always with an American staff of the CAB public affairs office as guard, even when we used the lavatory.
Military intel also utilized pseudo-newsmen and media scalawags – complete with multi-pocketed vests and press cards as large as coupon bonds – to spy on those of us in the working press, not only during rallies but even in our watering holes.
Did we ever cry harassment over these? No.
Harassment, to us, came in different ways.
Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, there were the death threats in envelopes with a single bullet – usually .45 – tied with black ribbon slotted on our gate or left at the counter of Shanghai Restaurant, our de facto press clubhouse.
In 1983, there was this cocky Pampanga mayor, cocked gun in hand, challenging to a duel Manila Bulletin’s Jerry Lacuarta with nothing but a Bic ballpen that could pass off as deadly weapon.
In 1988, there was this bodyguard of Angeles City Mayor Antonio Abad Santos named Lakay lining up bottles of beer on a table directly opposite ours at Shanghai, giving us satanic looks, and gesturing like he was drawing the .45 tucked in his waistband after every bottle gulped down.
Then there were the shadowy figures with bulging waistlines that suddenly materialized like one’s very own shadow be it in the dark of night or the light of day. And how else would you consider the Abad Santos’ civil security unit – at least six of them brandishing M-16s and machine pistols – swooping down on the DZYA radio station and posting themselves around Tagamasid program hosts Sonny Lopez, Ely Julian, Bert Basa, and Bong Lacson in the middle of broadcast critical of their boss? This happened on Sept. 10, 1988.
Or the ordeal sometime in 1990 of Manila Standard’s Jess Malabanan – stark naked, hands bound by electric cord, made to sit on a stump with a can atop his head as target in a marksmanship practice of Olongapo City police chief Lt. Col. Torres aiming an M-14 from a distance of some 30 paces?
As bad, if not worse, Manila Chronicle and Reuter’s Elmer Cato, Lopez of Malaya and UPI, and Lacson of People’s Journal/Tonight and AP sanctioned with a “death-in-24-hours” order by the right-wing vigilante headman Col. Rolly de Guzman to his henchmen after we were red-tagged as CPP-NPA propagandists. Our “execution” stayed only through the intervention of one of De Guzman’s closest lieutenants who felt he owed us a favor for his promotions in rank that he attributed to our wide coverage of his exploits in the field of battle, as well as the influence on the colonel of common friends. This was in 1988 too.
Yes, a quid pro quo – even in life-or-death matters – can obtain between newsmen and the police-military sans promises of scoops in exchange of friendship.
A protocol of sorts, aye, an SOP at the Angeles City Metropolitan District Command at the time of Col. Amado T. Espino was to take media along in anti-criminality and anti-insurgency operations, or if such posed grave danger, to give us immediate post-operation briefings.
Serious as harassments were in our time, they were no more than child’s play compared to the actual assaults committed on mediamen.
It was also during a Labor Day protest – May 1, 1990, to be precise – that Pampanga journos were savagely attacked by elements of the Clark Air Base Command-PAF. Of all the scores of journalists covering the rally, only local newsmen found themselves at the smashing end of truncheon-wielding troopers.
The Philippine Star’s Robert Quito and Headline Manila’s Renel Dizon suffered the most brutalization of the scores hurt in the PAF rampage.
On June 12, 1997, a security guard’s shotgun went off at the Central Fermentation alcohol plant in Apalit, Pampanga during the implementation by the DENR of its closure order, a buckshot hitting Philippine Star’s Ding Cervantes who wrote a series of stories on the pollution of the Pampanga River attributed to the plant.
Unarguably, the worst assault was the June 2000 daytime ambush in front of station DWGV-FM where former Porac, Pampanga mayor Roy David was co-hosting the hard-hitting Alas-4 Na! program with The Voice’s Ody Fabian and this writer, resulting to David’s severe wounding and the death of scriptwriter Joji Vitug, legman Butz Adizas, and David’s driver Buddy.
Amid all the mauling and the murder, we did not cry harassment. We screamed press freedom! Ironic, that this was mostly during the presidency of the heralded icon of democracy, the sainted Cory.
Indeed, how times have changed. And how we have changed. By no means though that the severity of the ordeals of our past, trivializes those of the present.
