For Mei Magsino

I met Melinda “Mei” Magsino only once in the flesh, but from that brief encounter I gathered that she was one feisty journalist, a woman who took on the governor and other officials of Batangas and was engaged in an “obscene” war of words and images with other influential people through social media at the time of her death.

Before she was shot on a street in Batangas City, Mei had already left journalism, after an independent provincial paper she founded and edited floundered. According to news reports, she was managing a health clinic with her boyfriend, but even with an independent business, she could not completely let go of the crusading and hard-hitting journalist in her, targeting officials of her hometown of Bauan through her Facebook accounts.

When interviewed, the officials who were the targets of her ire readily admitted to having “differences” with Magsino, although they of course denied having a hand in her brutal and very public killing.

But Magsino’s fate starkly illustrates the risks that provincial journalists face while plying their profession. National journalists may get the big stories and the public recognition, but their—our—existence is not as precarious as those who ply the journalism trade in provincial settings.

People who harbor resentment against journalists working for national media may hesitate before directly threatening them. For one, national newspapers and radio-TV outlets, even national digital outlets, have a lot of resources to back their employees, with established law firms at their beck and call, and promising lengthy and headline-worthy investigations and trials.

Then, too, a national media outlet can use its reach and influence to sustain public interest in the case, and even win the support of public officials.

Also, however direct the confrontations are between a national-level journalist and a national or local official, the exchange is very rarely personal, with the physical, social and even “emotional” distance providing some space for cooling off and more rational calculations.

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But in the provinces and smaller cities, people literally “know where you live.” The connections between the journalist and the official concerned may in fact be personal and familial, with ties dating back years and generations.

Indeed, matters often deteriorate into personal attacks, with critical coverage taken not with a grain of salt but with an entire sack of emotions and resentments. In this setting, anger can turn deadly and fatal.

It’s the highly personal nature of relationships that makes legitimate criticism difficult, and makes it near-impossible for the target to distance himself or herself from the hidden meanings and innuendoes.

In the past, provincial journalism got little respect. In many cases, provincial papers were funded by local officials themselves, with the papers or radio stations turning into virtual mouthpieces for those in power. But the advent of the new media and the emergence of a new generation of journalists have loosened the ties to funders and given the provincial journalist a false sense of security and impunity.

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There has been no letup in the number of journalists killed in the course of or as a consequence of their work.

The Philippines has even been rated as among the top three countries in the world (alongside Iraq and Somalia) where the killing of a journalist is “most likely to go unpunished.”

That means that the odds of solving the puzzle behind Magsino’s brazen shooting aren’t promising at all, with new journalist-victims joining the list. Indeed, it seems that Magsino’s fears of “becoming another statistic” when explaining why she decided to temporarily leave Batangas in the wake of threats to her life have now been validated.

So will Mei Magsino become “just another statistic” in the growing roster of murdered journalists?

Officials at various levels have promised to go after the perpetrators of journalist killings. But after a few weeks or months, their resolve seems to crumble, mainly because it means going after powerful, influential individuals who have private armed groups at their disposal.

The country’s biggest media killing case, the Ampatuan massacre where 32 media people were among the 58 killed in connection with the planned filing of candidacy of now Maguindanao Gov. Toto Mangudadatu, is still mired in the rigmarole of court proceedings, six years after the killings. What are the chances for justice for Mei Magsino?

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Of course, in the larger scheme of things, the killing of journalists is but a footnote in the overall state of violence and personal insecurity in this country.

We have two insurgencies to deal with (albeit one of them has been on ceasefire for three years and, if all things go well, will soon be settled with finality), several private armed groups and bandit gangs wreaking havoc in the countryside, a number of organized drug and criminal gangs operating with seeming impunity, and any number of petty criminals wandering around.

But the killing of journalists—and the poor record of arrest and prosecution of their killers—holds a meaning beyond mere numbers or statistics. The journalists’ deaths speak eloquently of the culture of impunity that has hounded the country for decades. After all, if people who make a living exposing injustice and corruption, whose work involves “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” are themselves vulnerable to violence and to official indifference, then what sort of hope will we hold out to those seeking justice and inspiration?

This is to Mei Magsino—for courage under fire, and for hope that her death will not be for naught.