PANANAW NG Malayang Pilipino.
More than the viewpoint though, Punto! Central Luzon embodies the very standpoint, the paninindigan, of the free Filipino grounded on the solid foundations of Truth, Justice and Fairness.
The pursuit of the journalism vocation, especially in community newspapering, is fraught with peril, with enticements as well – the very things that try men’s souls, so to speak.
Hence, in our 11 years of serving, came more than our (un)rightful share of physical threats and mental harassments, of cancelled advertisements and legal notices withheld, and yes, of times at the prosecutor’s office and days in court to face libel suits. All par for the course, these we – with as much resignation as delight — take with the proverbial grain of salt. And soldier on with our duty of serving our community.
As a foremost Philippine media institution reminded us in some anniversary long past: “The commitment to serve the people, the country and the Almighty is long, arduous and loaded with trials.”
No greater relevance are those words than at this Duterte juncture in our history.
We can only take to heart the universal truth propounded in the 1880s yet by one crusading journalist at that time named Karl Marx, thus:
“The free press is the omnipresent eye of the people, the embodied confidence of a people in itself, the articulate bond that ties the individual to the state and the world, the incorporated culture which transfigures material struggles into intellectual struggles. It is the ruthless confession of a people to itself, and it is well known that the power of confession is redeeming…
“Freedom of the press is the intellectual mirror in which a people sees itself, and selfviewing is the first condition of wisdom…
“The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom.”
Pananaw ng Malayang Pilipino. So, with Punto! Central Luzon. Through the eleven years past, onward.
