MANILA, Philippines?First, paste Albert Camus? warning on your computer screen: ?A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.?

Next, flick through the ?Freedom of the Press 2010? survey, just released by Freedom House. Since 1980, this body monitored ups and downs of media liberty in 195 countries and territories.

Then, contrast the ?partly free? ranking given to the Philippines to Tunisia?s outburst of unfettered journalism, unlocked by the still on-going ?Jasmine Revolution.?

?Press freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year,? the report asserts. ?(This) produced a global landscape in which only one in six people live in countries with a free press.?

?The Philippines received a downward trend arrow?and (a) ranking of partly free.? This is due to ?general decline in the rule of law in Mindanao,? Freedom House adds. Specifically, it cites the massacre of 57 civilians?32 of whom were journalists.

?The Ampatuans are in the dock for the Maguindanao massacre,? Bohol Chronicle points out. ?Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shirks any blame for coddling warlords. But she willingly accepted landslide votes from them.?

?The positive momentum that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall has stalled, and in some cases reversed,? adds the 2010 study. ?The steps backwards taken by a number of new democracies like Namibia, the Philippines, Senegal and South Africa are particularly disturbing? Journalists in many countries cannot do their job without fear of repercussions.

?Declines were noted in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines and Fiji. This region also continues to be the home of two of the survey?s poorest performers, North Korea and Burma, plus the world?s largest poor performer, China.?

?Globalization of censorship by countries such as China, and international bodies such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, poses an additional threat to freedom of expression.?

These are the world?s 10 worst-rated countries. Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. ?In these states, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime. Citizens? access to unbiased information is severely limited. Dissent is crushed??

That was the case of Tunisia too. For 23 years, the just overthrown government of President Ben Ali gagged the press in ways Ferdinand Marcos would have envied.

Ben Ali?s cops allowed delivery of only two copies of the opposition weekly Al-Mawkif to each vendor. These were issues that carried critical reports, like the protest by five women judges against years of harassment. Fear of arrest or maltreatment led to self-censorship. Reporters merely rehashed releases from the Tunis Afrique Presse agency.

Government drove more than 100 newsmen into exile, a tally by the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists reveals. Al-Arabya?s Slim Boukhdhir sustained serious injuries for a BBC interview that discussed intimidation of media, use of criminal defamation laws on issues related to Ben Ali?s wife, Leila Trabelsi, the ?Imelda Marcos of the Arab World,? Times of India reported.

All that has changed with the still-ongoing Jasmine Revolution. Now, media have exploded with unfettered reporting. ?We were not even able to ask critical questions to any of the officials two weeks ago,? marvels journalist Nadia Barrouta.

Or is this the end of a nightmare? Filipino newsmen asked after Edsa 1 dismantled the Marcos dictatorship. Tunisian journalists working for the Dar El Anwar media group, which publishes three newspapers, demanded the resignation of their editors in chief.

?They were appointed by the ancien régime, and they were suffocating our freedom,? Asma Sahboun, a journalist at Dar El Anwar?s Echourouk paper told BBC. ?We are resolute about not jeopardizing freedom of speech that eluded us in the past.?

Part of the Jasmine Revolution?s outcome will be shaped by media?and its increasing cyberspace capacity to rip down censorship by dictators.

Underground radio, a samizdat press and tele-women vaulted Ferdinand Marcos? gags on the press. Foreign TV and radio broadcast that peaceful rebellion. First generation cell phones appeared six years after People Power 1.

In 2001, Filipinos became the first in the world to wage a revolution with cell phones to oust Joseph Estrada, noted Viewpoint in ?Let a thousand cell phones bloom.? (Inquirer, 7/28/05) They ?provided the first real test of text messaging,? Howard Rheingold writes in ?Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.?

Seven million Chinese hefted cell phones in 1996. A 38-fold explosion resulted in 269 million subscribers by 2003, Worldwatch Institute notes. Today, over 600 million Chinese?approximately six Philippines?text or call.

Tunisia has one of the region?s highest literacy rates. And 34 out of every 100 Tunisians had access to the Net. And one out of 10 are Facebook users. And they?re using them to the max.

Filipinos have a stake in the question whether the Jasmine Revolution will ripple out. Over two million overseas Filipino workers are spread throughout a region where other presidents-for-life fidget.

Hosni Mubarak, 82, has been president for three decades in a restive Egypt. Moammar Gadhafi has ruled Libya for 41 years. Intimations of mortality fester most in nations that fudge issues of succession, and oppressive rule is steadily eroded by cyberspace media.

Not all people power revolts have happy-ever-after-endings. The Burma junta bludgeoned the Saffron Revolution. And Uzbekistan crushed a similar revolt. One can only wish Tunisian journalists luck. We all need the scent of jasmine.

(Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com )