Aguilar 2014

This article was downloaded by: [Memorial University of Newfoundland]
On: 28 January 2015, At: 03:18

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Critical Asian Studies

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcra20
KEEPING THE STATE AT BAY: The Killing of Journalists in

the Philippines, 1998-2012
Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr., Meynardo P. Mendoza & Anne Lan K. Candelaria
Published online: 02 Oct 2014.
Click for updates
To cite this article: Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr., Meynardo P. Mendoza & Anne Lan K. Candelaria (2014) KEEPING THE
STATE AT BAY: The Killing of Journalists in the Philippines, 1998-2012, Critical Asian Studies, 46:4, 649-677, DOI:
10.1080/14672715.2014.960719
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2014.960719
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Critical Asian Studies
46:4 (2014), 649–677
Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay
KEEPING THE STATE AT BAY

Downloaded by [Memorial University of Newfoundland] at 03:18 28 January 2015
The Killing of Journalists

in the Philippines, 1998–2012
Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr., Meynardo P. Mendoza,

and Anne Lan K. Candelaria
ABSTRACT: In Southeast Asia the Philippines holds the distinction of reporting the
highest number of murdered journalists between 1992 and 2012. This record
makes the Philippines closer to countries in other parts of the world characterized
as “transitional” democracies. These countries enjoy near full press freedom, but
their institutional setting allows the perpetrators of crimes to evade accountability.
The authors of this article argue that explaining these murders as due to state re-
pression of progressive journalists in the Philippines ignores the complexity of
these killings. This article shows that journalists murdered for their occupation
(classified as “motive confirmed”) did not threaten the interests of the state as state
but rather the interests of local power-holders. Thus, the killings of mass media
practitioners need to be understood in the context of local-level contestations over
positions and resources sanctioned by the state framework, particularly following
the decentralization since 1991. Preliminary data analysis of journalist deaths from
1998 to 2012 and selected case studies suggest that these killings are primarily local
events, mostly in provincial towns and cities.
Globally the scholarly literature on the murder of journalists is sparse. The data
show unequivocally, however, that mass media practitioners have been mur-
1
dered in large numbers worldwide. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
reports that 975 journalists were killed around the world from 1992 to 2013;
2
their cases have been “confirmed” as “work-related” deaths. Among these
cases, war was the beat covered by only 35 percent of the victims (see
cpj.org/killed/). In other words, most journalists were killed “in reprisal for
3
their work, as opposed to being killed by the hazards of combat reporting.”
ISSN 1467-2715 print/1472-6033 online / 04 / 000649–29 ©2014 BCAS, Inc. DOI:10.1080/14672715.2014.960719
However, the CFP also screens the information because journalists have been
killed for reasons not related to their profession, which it labels as “uncon-
firmed motive.”
This article focuses on the Philippines because of its peculiar record: even
without a war, as in Iraq, the number of journalists killed in the Philippines is
among the highest in the world; in fact, the figure is just second to Iraq. Without
a proper analysis, this fact can be easily explained away as due to a so-called cul-
ture of violence or culture of impunity or some other label that tends to simplify
rather than probe a complex phenomenon.
In 2012 the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) pub-
lished a book on the “culture of impunity” surrounding the killing of journalists
4
in the Philippines. The “disciplinary papers” in the AIJC book offer broad theo-
retical perspectives and case studies of specific killings as well as the results of
“roundtable discussions.” The volume is driven by a desire to craft a “multi-
disciplinary” research agenda and identify “action plans” ranging from altering
child-rearing practices to reforming the judiciary. Although it does not neglect
“structural” factors, the book tends to reduce explanations to cultural and psy-
chological determinants.
A more nuanced study is the unpublished report by Marco Stefan Lagman
and his colleagues, which was undertaken for the Unesco National Commission
5
of the Philippines. This report provides a statistical analysis of the killings of
journalists and their associated geographical distribution and also considers
the implications for the notion of press freedom. The report focuses on deaths
from 1986 to 2012, but makes no distinction between confirmed and uncon-
firmed deaths.
Apart from the AIJC book and the Unesco study, most materials on the mur-
der of journalists in the Philippines come in the form of reports and
documentaries produced by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). On its
website, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) provides an
interactive map on the killing of journalists (see www.cmfr-phil.org/flagship-
programs/freedom-watch/). It labels these killings “attacks against and threats
6
to press freedom in the Philippines” and posits that these journalists were
killed “in the line of duty.” The CMFR makes no distinction between confirmed
and unconfirmed cases in the way the CPJ does.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) rightfully decries these murders in the Philip-
1. Even in the United States, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), six journal-
ists have been killed since 1992—five with “motive confirmed.” “Full justice” has been seen in
only half of the cases; “partial justice” in the other half (cpj.org/killed/ americas/usa/). Indeed,
U.S. history has not been spared from the unresolved death of a journalist; see Wickham 2011.
2. The CPJ (cpj.org/killed/terminology.php) considers a case “confirmed” only if it is “reasonably
certain that a journalist was murdered in direct reprisal for his or her work; was killed in
crossfire during combat situations; or was killed while carrying out a dangerous assignment
such as coverage of a street protest.” The CPJ database “does not include journalists killed in
accidents such as car or plane crashes.”
3. Smyth 2010.
4. Rosario-Braid et al. 2012.
5. Lagman et al. 2013.
6. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) 2014.
650 Critical Asian Studies 46:4 (2014)
pines. In its 2013 report, however, the murder of journalists is lumped together
with all other killings under “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappear-
ances.” It states: “Since 2001, hundreds of leftist activists, journalists,
environmentalists, and clergy have been killed by alleged members of the secu-
rity forces.”7 The culpability is pinned on military personnel for these crimes,
which were carried out presumably on orders from central state actors in order
to silence progressive journalists who expose corruption, help peasants get
their fair share, and decry human rights violations. Journalists are killed for the
same reasons that leftist activists and others are killed.
Lumping all these murders together, however, posits a simple correlation be-
tween state control and repression and the number of journalists killed. It also
assumes not just the coerciveness of the central state apparatus but its mono-
lithic character as well. Taking the killing of journalists as a sign of outright state
repression flies in the face of the fact that the Philippines fares well on press
freedom in contrast to the widely known degree of central state control and re-
pression in other countries in the region, ranging from Suharto’s Indonesia to
one-party state Singapore. Thus Freedom House considers the country as
8
“partly free,” with a score of 3 where 1 is the best and 7 the worst. Reporters
Sans Frontières, by contrast, gives the Philippines a lower press freedom rat-
ing—with a score of 43.11 (with 0 the best and 100 the worst) and a global rank
of 147th out of 179 countries—precisely because of the level of violence against
9
journalists. As Markus Behmer has shown, although they bring attention to cru-
cial issues, “the value of the rankings is limited, at least as far as strong scientific
10
criteria are concerned.” Lagman and colleagues point out correctly that the
uncritical juxtaposition of journalist killings and press freedom leads to the er-
roneous “impression that countries where violence against journalists occur
[sic] do not have a free press and, conversely, low levels of press freedom are
11
primarily caused by violence against journalists.”
In order to arrive at a better understanding of these murders, we argue that,
while some journalists are liquidated as a form of repression orchestrated by
the central state because the interests of the state as state are threatened, in the
Philippines the killings of media practitioners need to be understood in the lo-
cal context. The local context may still be state-related but the interests
implicated in these murders do not necessarily threaten the state itself or its
power apparatus. The killing could be a form of repression but not one directed
by the central state.
In advancing this argument, we raise more questions than we can answer. We
do so in the hope of demonstrating the complexity of these crimes. Moreover,
because of the immense data required to understand all the murders, we are left
with making suggestions as to where to look further to understand the phenom-
7. Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2013, 1.

8. Freedom House (FH) 2013.
9. Reporters Without Borders (RWB) 2013.
10. Behmer 2009, 32; see Tran et al. 2011; Holtz-Bacha 2004.
11. Lagman et al. 2013, 91.
Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 651
enon. In any event, we raise enough issues to situate these killings not in any
supposed cultural proclivity to murder but in social and political structures at
the local level.
We divide our discussion into two parts. First, we situate the Philippine re-
cord in a global context to discern its character and distinctiveness. Second, we
disaggregate the data so as to understand the murder of journalists in the con-
text of local conflicts. In the process, we hope to identify some issues that can be
further studied and analyzed in future studies.
Murder and Transitional Democracies

Despite the dearth of studies on this topic, insights can be gleaned from the few
studies that do exist. Leonard Sussman, for instance, has noted that before the
12
1980s mass media practitioners were targets or victims of acts of revenge. Re-
flecting on the divergent reactions in the West and in Russia to the October 2006
murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her critical coverage of the
13
Chechen conflict, in her apartment building in Moscow, Natalia Roudakova
14
points to the need to examine the specific historical context of such murders.
The “seemingly strange silence and cynicism” in Russia, Roudakova writes, can
be understood in terms of the transformations in the mass media in the post-So-
viet era that have led to the “fragmentation and privatization of journalism” and
given rise to a powerful discourse on journalism as “prostitution” and the pub-
15
lic’s loss of trust in journalists. Roudakova concludes, “we are left with a
realization that journalists in societies undergoing a profound social transfor-
mation, on the one hand, and their colleagues in established democracies on
the other, are not endowed with identical motives and do not engage in the pur-
suit of the same goals, and that journalism is always plural and is always
16
contingent on local configurations of history, culture, and power.”
Analyzing panel data from 179 countries, Christian Bjørnskov and Andreas
Freytag have shown that the murder of journalists “can serve as an enforcement
17
mechanism of corrupt deals under certain regime assumptions.” By liquidat-
ing the journalist who exposes corruption, this obstacle is removed and the
illicit deal can proceed. Using game theory, Bjørnskov and Freytag demonstrate
that “corruption is strongly associated with how many journalists are mur-
18
dered, but only in countries with almost full press freedom.” Where press
freedom is low or absent, regardless of the political system, the murder of jour-
nalists hardly exists. Where press freedom is high but the legal system makes
murder an unattractive option, the problem is also minimized. Thus the murder
of journalists appears to be acute in transitional societies, where press freedom
12. Sussman 1991.

13. On Anna Politkovskaya, named by the CPJ in 2006 as “one of the world’s top press freedom fig-
ures of the past 25 years,” see cpj.org/killed/2006/anna-politkovskaya.php.
14. Roudakova 2009.
15. Ibid., 413, 424.
16. Ibid., 425.
17. Bjørnskov and Freytag 2010, 1.
18. Ibid., 21.
Table 1. Journalists killed in Southeast Asia and selected countries
is high but corrup-
elsewhere (motives confirmed and unconfirmed), 1992–2012.
tion is rife, the
le gal s y st e m i s
weak, and other
institutional char-
acteristics allow
this form of vio-
lence to escalate.
The Philippines
seems to fit the
transitional soci-
ety model de-

scribed by Bjørns-
kov and Freytag.
As table 1 shows,
si n c e 1992 t he
Philippines has
had b y f a r t he
highest number of
journalists
killed—110—in
Southeast Asia,
whether in cases
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists, www.cpj.org. of confirmed or
unconfirmed mo-
tives (following the CPJ classification). This figure is in stark contrast to coun-
tries in the region where, regardless of whether the state is capitalist or commu-
nist, press freedom is highly curtailed, which correlates with the absence of a
journalist being killed, as in Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei as well as Vietnam
(the one journalist killed in Vietnam in 2011 was set ablaze by his wife while he
was sleeping at home due to his gambling losses; see cpj.org/killed/asia/viet-
nam/). Laos, too, has no record of a journalist being murdered. Not quite fitting
the picture is Myanmar, with its controlled press yet with three deaths (two in
1999 and one in 2007), although this is a very small number.
In Southeast Asia, a far second to the Philippines is Thailand, where only six-
teen journalists have been killed. Indonesia and Cambodia are next, with
eleven and ten murders respectively. Many of the journalists killed in cases of
known motive only in these four Southeast Asian countries were reporting on
corruption (see table 2 below). Corruption predominates among victims in In-
donesia and Thailand, while politics was the preponderant beat of journalists
killed in the Philippines and Cambodia. However, if the thirty-two journalists
killed in the Maguindanao massacre in 2009 are bracketed aside, an extraor-
19
dinarily large number killed in a single event, corruption emerges as the
19. On 23 November 2009, during the gubernatorial electoral contest in Maguindanao Province,
Table 2. Beat covered by journalists killed in Southeast Asia and selected countries else-
where (motive confirmed), 1992–2012. Multiple responses. (Percentages)
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org).

professional concern of journalists slain in the Philippines, bringing it more in
line with Thailand and Indonesia rather than with Cambodia.
In terms of the number of journalists killed, the Philippines is more in league
with countries in other parts of the world than with countries in Southeast Asia
(table 1 above). The following countries have large numbers of journalists
killed since 1992 in cases of confirmed and unconfirmed motives: Iraq, Russia,
Colombia, Pakistan, Mexico, India, and Brazil (fig. 1 below). When the Maguin-
danao massacre is bracketed aside, the Philippines is farther from Iraq and
closer to the other countries; it ranks lower than Russia and Pakistan in killings
with motives confirmed (fig. 2 below).
Not surprisingly, if we focus on confirmed murders, war reporting was the
dominant beat of journalists killed in Iraq, but it was somewhat high in Pakistan
and Russia as well. Reporting on corruption was noticeably high in Brazil and
Colombia, but not in the other countries. In Mexico most murdered journalists
were reporting on crime, mostly drugs. Reporting on politics was a major haz-
ard for journalists in Pakistan. Interestingly, journalists killed in India were
covering politics, business, corruption, and culture, in that order (table 2).
The temporality of these killings must also be taken into account. In Russia
the numbers were highest in the mid 1990s; they declined in the 2000s, taper-
20
ing off to very low numbers after 2009. Similarly Colombia had high rates in
21
the late 1990s and early 2000s, with much lower numbers recorded since then.
thirty-two mass media practitioners were killed in the single deadliest event for journalists in
history. See below for details.
20. See cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/.
21. See cpj.org/killed/americas/colombia/.
Fig. 1. Number of journalists murdered in selected countries, 1992–2012.
Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org).
Fig. 2. Number of journalists murdered in selective countries (Philippine data excludes

the Maguindanao massacre), 1992–2012.
Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org)
In Pakistan the numbers began to climb in 2005, reaching peaks in 2010 and
22
2011. (Five journalists were killed in Pakistan in 2013. ) Analogously Mexico’s
23
numbers were low and spotty prior to 2004 but then rose to a peak in 2010.
Iraq had no journalists killed prior to 2003 when it was under an authoritarian
regime, but since the Iraq War killings of journalists soared, with large numbers
22. See cpj.org/killed/asia/pakistan/.

23. See cpj.org/killed/americas/mexico/.
Fig. 3. Annual number of journalists killed in the Philippines, 1998–2012.
Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/)
killed in 2006 and 2007. The number of murders of journalists in Iraq declined
24
between 2007 and 2012.
In contrast to the decline in Russia and Colombia and the rise in Pakistan and
Mexico, chronicity characterizes the killing of journalists in the Philippines; the
Maguindanao massacre resulted in an aberrant peak, but journalists have been
killed every year since 2000, with the number of murders reaching a peak in
25
2004 of eleven (see fig. 3). In this regard, the Philippines is comparable to In-
dia and Brazil in the regularity of killings, although India recorded the highest
number in 1997 (seven killed); Brazil’s two highest numbers were seen in 2011
26
(six killed) and 2012 (five killed).
It is instructive to look at the situation in the Philippines prior to and after the
formal restoration of democracy in 1986. Although we have not yet been able to
secure reliable data, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
reported in 2003 that “fifty-nine journalists [had] been killed in the line of duty
in the Philippines since 1961. Of this number, forty-two were killed after 1986,
when democratic institutions were restored in the Philippines after 14 years of
27
dictatorship.” In other words, from 1961 to 1986 (including the fourteen years
of martial law) only seventeen journalists were killed in the line of duty, roughly
one every year and a half. From 1986 until the year of the PCIJ report, the aver-
age number of journalists killed “in the line of duty” rose to 2.3 every year. The
online database of the CMFR shows that 139 journalists were killed in the Philip-
pines “in the line of duty” between 1986 and 2013. The data translate to nearly
28
five murders per year. The point is that the restoration of formal democratic in-
24. See cpj.org/killed/mideast/iraq/.

25. See cpj.org/killed/asia/philippines/.
26. For the number of journalists killed in 2013, see cpj.org/killed/asia/india/; cpj.org/killed/amer-
icas/brazil/.
27. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) 2003.
28. Putting the Maguindanao murders aside, the total would be 107 journalists, or close to four
journalists killed per year between 1986 and 2013.
stitutions in 1986 apparently set the conditions for the high and recurrent
number of journalist murders in the Philippines.
For the “transitional democracies” of the Philippines, India, and Brazil, the
murder of journalists is a constant feature of the media landscape. These are
countries that are not known for central state control or repression of the mass
media. We need to look elsewhere for an explanation. The model proposed by
Bjørnskov and Freytag is suggestive, but it is limited in that it does not incorpo-
rate beats other than corruption. Nonetheless, the cases of the Philippines,
India, and Brazil indicate that their insight—namely, that journalists are killed in
countries with “almost full press freedom” but are not killed where press free-
dom is constrained—is intuitively plausible.
Local versus National Killings

In his analysis of modern Thai history, Benedict Anderson has traced the rise of
political assassinations, which he argues fall into two categories: local killings
and national killings. According to Anderson, individuals murdered in national
killings, such as student activists, were “regarded as enemies of the state, or
were cynically depicted as such for Machiavelian reasons.” The victims posed no
threat to any particular private interests, and the perpetrators were “more or
29
less direct agents” of the state apparatus. In contrast, those who were targeted
in local killings “were felt to threaten the power or profits of provincial nota-
30
bles, including landowners, businessmen, and corrupt village headmen.”
Most of the local killings were “private-enterprise murders,” perpetrated by lo-
cal gunmen or private mercenaries who were hired to stop the threat to the
gunmen’s employer’s personal interests. In this schema the killings of journal-
ists fell into the category of local killings.
We submit that the murders of journalists in the Philippines after the formal
restoration of democracy in 1986—which brought back competitive elections
and freedom of the press—are mainly of the local variety. Five years after this
historic watershed, the Philippines passed the 1991 Local Government Code,
which officially aimed to make local government units (LGUs) self-reliant enti-
ties and active partners as well in the attainment of national goals. This
decentralization project of the Philippine state gave LGUs more power, author-
ity, responsibilities, and resources than they had enjoyed previously.
The code also brought about two critical changes that have heightened the
contestations over power at the local level. First, the devolution of the delivery
of basic social services as well as the regulatory and licensing powers of the cen-
tral state has meant greater responsibility for LGUs, but it has also increased
their influence over social, political, and economic transactions. From an av-
erage of 11 percent in 1985–1991, LGU share in general government
31
expenditures rose to 21 percent in the 1992–2003 period. The increased fi-
nancial obligation has pushed many LGUs to become entrepreneurial. In effect,
29. Anderson 2004 (Murder), 185.

30. Ibid.
31. Manasan 2004, 8.
they have become “resource brokers” in an arena where the need is great and re-
source base scarce.
Second, complementing this expansion of responsibility has been the LGUs’
increased access to both local and national financial resources. The code has
not only empowered LGUs to create their own sources of revenue but also man-
dated the national government to allocate 40 percent of its total internal
revenue collection to all LGUs through the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).
The IRA, which is transferred to LGUs automatically and unconditionally, has
given LGUs a large and steady infusion of external money. In 1991 the IRA repre-
sented 6.88 percent of the national budget; by 2011 the corresponding figure
had risen to 17.25 percent, registering an average annual increase of 15.9 per-
32
cent from 1993 to 2011.
Another contextual factor needs to be explained. In 2001 Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo ascended to the presidency via an extraconstitutional route, through a
second People Power Revolution in the middle of then incumbent president Jo-
seph Estrada’s impeachment trial. Reneging on her word that she had no
33
political ambitions, she ran for the presidency in the 2004 national elections.
34
The 2004 vote was marred by violence and corruption. The Philippine Na-
tional Police reported that 118 election-related deaths had occurred from the
start of the presidential campaign until one week before the elections; and an-
35
other thirty more fatalities were reported a week after the balloting.
In this setting, President Arroyo’s ascent to power had become less contro-
versial than her efforts to remain in power. She used her electoral victory in such
a tumultuous political environment to craft a strong presidency or an executive
hegemony, which allowed her to curb unrest and control violence associated
with the election losers. Extending Guillermo O’Donnell’s work, Malaya Ronas
describes executive hegemony as personified by a president who is able to mo-
bilize vast executive powers to be strong enough to engage in clientelism,
36
corruption, and patrimonialism. Although Ronas’s work analyzes the effects of
executive hegemony on horizontal accountability (accountability among the
three coequal branches of government), the spillover effects of such a presi-
dency extend to vertical accountability issues as well. This vertical dimension is
evident particularly in the executive power over the IRA and the release of the
legislators’ Development Fund, commonly known as the pork barrel. While
both these funds are meant to spur local economic growth and fund social de-
37
velopment programs to alleviate poverty, the dynastic saturation of
32. Holmes 2011.

33. The 1987 Philippine Constitution bars a president from reelection but allows for the election
of a person who has succeeded as president and has not served for more than four years.
34. The “Hello Garci” scandal that surfaced in the 2004 elections later became an impetus for an
impeachment case against Arroyo. President Arroyo was accused of manipulating the election
results, when a taped conversation of her allegedly asking Comelec commissioner Virgilio
(“Garci”) Garcillano “if she could lead her closest rival in the Presidential election by one mil-
lion votes” was leaked. Ronas 2011, 121.
35. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs 2004.
36. O’Donnell 1998; Ronas 2011.
37. Mendoza et al. (2012) note that 70 percent of jurisdiction-based legislators in the 15th Con-
jurisdiction-based legislators and local government leaders has intensified the
cleavages between national and local power.
Ultimately, a president battling to regain legitimacy amid declining public
trust ratings and threats of disloyalty among the military has needed the influ-
ence of local political elites more than the elites needed the president’s
support. Topping it all was Arroyo’s Executive Order 546, issued in 2006, which
allowed local officials to deploy armed civilian groups as auxiliaries of the Armed
Forces of the Philippines in fighting insurgents. This order allegedly enabled local
elites, such as the Ampatuans, to build private armies in the guise of counterinsur-
gency. This measure tipped the scales of power in favor of local elites, who
became more emboldened over their own territories and personal concerns. It
has also made local elected positions highly attractive and rewarding.
Within this historical and political frame, the killings of journalists can be un-
derstood as largely local in nature. These local killings are associated with
moves to protect, consolidate, or expand the political and economic interests of
local power-holders whose positions in government are officially sanctioned by
a “democratizing” political order but which, contrary to democratic ideals, have
become the power-holders’ base to promote private interests. Where such posi-
tions are only weakly guaranteed by the political order, local elites would not be
attracted to take them on, as is shown in the history of Thailand that Anderson
has sketched. But where the political system of electoral representation adds a
premium to those positions and the state seeks their institutionalization, albeit
hobblingly, plus a guaranteed flow of financial resources as in the IRA, local
elites find them an attractive means for personal aggrandizement. The contest
to acquire such elected positions can become very bloody indeed, particularly
in the Philippine setting where, as Andreas Ufen puts it, “the subordination of
the national party apparatus to local and regional leaders [exerts] disastrous ef-
38
fects on party and party system institutionalization.”
Thus in a transitional order where offices are attractive for the reasons just
mentioned and local actors have free rein, power-holders whose private inter-
ests are threatened will act to eliminate those threats. In this setting, unlike in
Anderson’s Thailand scenario, the interests at stake are not always those of pro-
vincial notables with private business interests but of local government
executives as well as key personnel of devolved government departments.
Thus, a local journalist who threatens those private interests, such as by expos-
ing a corrupt deal or causing the electorate to prefer one’s electoral opponent,
stands to be liquidated. The threat, which can be amorphous, is manifested tan-
gibly by the journalist, who may act singly, in tandem with a movement, or in
association with the power-holder’s opponent.
39
The murder weapon is usually an illicit gun. The killers may be hired private
gress belonged to political dynasties, while Rivera 2011 reports that 94 percent of provinces in
the Philippines have political families.
38. Ufen 2008, 343.
39. Note, however, that a penetrating study of gun production and trade in the Philippines argues
that “the level of gun-related violence and the eruption of vertical and horizontal conflict can-
Protesters during a rally at a
roundabout in suburban
Quezon City, north of Manila,
Thursday, 18 May 2006, to
protest the spate of killings of
left-wing activists and journalists
in the country. Among South-
east Asian countries, the Philip-
pines has the highest number
of journalists killed since 1992.
(Credit: AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
assassins or members of private armies. Even members of the police and mili-
tary establishments, although agents of the state, hire themselves out to or are
used by local power-holders as mercenaries. The Department of the Interior
and Local Government Act of 1990 and subsequent amendments restored the
mayor’s control over the local police force. As Peter Kreuzer puts it, “Under con-
ditions of local boss-rule the police can easily become an armed group used for
furthering private interests.”40 For its part, the local military detachment, which
is not under the formal control of the local government, is theoretically autono-
mous from local power-holders. But the demands of counterinsurgency, among
other reasons, may make even the military collude with and even rely on local
politicians, resulting in the instrumental use and partial politicization of the lo-
cal military unit. The use of members from a local military unit for private
violence is but another small step. With these individuals doing the killing, the
occupation-related murders of journalists can be depicted as quasi-state mur-
ders and not simply private-enterprise initiatives. Nevertheless, the survival of
the state itself is not directly implicated in these local killings, unlike in the case
of national killings such as the disappeared student activists.
In a number of cases the contenders to local positions of power seek to
eliminate their opponents directly, especially during elections. Political assas-
sinations may even be perpetrated in Metro Manila as a result of local conflicts.
A recent example is the 20 December 2013 murder of Ukol Talumpa, mayor of
not be pinned on the shadow economy in guns” and that “the weak governance of gun
ownership and trade does not always produce an escalation of violence.” Quitoriano 2013, 78.
40. Kreuzer 2009, 52.
Labangan, Zamboanga del Sur, who was gunned down, along with his wife
and nephew, at the arrival bay of Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International
41
Airport soon after arriving from Zamboanga City. Thus members of local
elites may murder each other. Although intra-elite assassinations occur in re-
sponse to contests over local power and profits, these killings have been
excluded from the current discussion, which zeroes in on the murders of
journalists.
Journalists as Victims of National Killings

Our stress on the local is not meant to sideline the handful of journalists who
can be validly seen as victims of national killings. During the incumbency of
President Arroyo (2001 to 2010), state forces targeted some journalists on sus-
picion of having links with communists and their affiliates. This pattern is
discernible in the murders of Benjaline Hernandez and Ricardo “Ding” Uy.
Hernandez was killed on 5 April 2002 in Arakan Valley, North Cotabato. For-
merly a campus journalist at the Ateneo de Davao University, she joined the
human rights group Karapatan and was vice president for Mindanao of the Col-
lege Editors Guild of the Philippines. Hernandez was in the Arakan Valley
reportedly to document a massacre that happened in the same place in 2001.
Local paramilitary forces led by a Philippine Army sergeant fired at Hernandez,
42
killing her and three of her four companions. The military reported that the
four were killed in an encounter with the NPA; NBI forensics revealed that
Hernandez was killed at close range, suffering a massive fracture of her skull.
Ricardo “Ding” Uy was a radio broadcaster of dzRS–AM radio in Sorsogon
Province. A “staunch critic of the militarization of Sorsogon towns” and the pro-
vincial coordinator of the leftist Bayan Muna, Uy anchored a radio program
43
sponsored by Bayan Muna. He was active in the fact-finding missions on the
deaths of Bayan Muna members in the province and was a member of Manin-
dugan, a human rights alliance in the province. In the radio program of the
Philippine Army aired over dzMS, Uy was “tagged as an emerging National Peo-
ple’s Army [NPA] leader.” He was shot dead inside his rice mill on 17 November
44
2005.
Apart from cases such as those of Hernandez and Uy—which the CPJ has not
45
confirmed as journalist killings —the far greater number of deaths among me-
dia personnel can be understood as local killings.
41. Esmaquel et al. 2013.

42. Olea 2013.
43. Uy was a “block-timer,” meaning he leased airtime from a station owner and had to solicit his
own commercial sponsors. Uy and other block-timing radio broadcasters are thus radio entre-
preneurs.
44. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility 2005 (Ding).
45. Note that CPJ 2005 (George) classifies Uy’s killing under “motive unconfirmed,” despite his
leftist credentials. The CPJ does not list Hernandez as a journalist victim, whether for con-
firmed or unconfirmed motive.
Local Killings: Further Entanglements with State Structures
As noted above, the local killings of journalists, although not perpetrated in de-
fense of the state, are entwined with state structures. This state connection is
evident in the murder of radio broadcaster Julius Ceasar Cauzo, who was shot
by a lone gunman in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija, on 8 November 2012. Entan-
gled in Cauzo’s killing were state regulations on urban centers, which
intensified certain local conflicts. The Cauzo case revolves around the plebiscite
that was to be held on 1 December 2012 to ratify a new law that would grant
Cabanatuan the status of a “highly urbanized city” (HUC), which would make it
administratively and politically autonomous from the province. The sitting
mayor supported the HUC law but a political opponent, the governor, opposed
the law because it would have caused him to lose control over Cabanatuan.
Cauzo was employed by radio station dwJJ, which was owned by the mayor’s
family, and he supported the HUC law and debated on air with reporters who
46
opposed it. Evidently the proposed change in official status of Cabanatuan City
would have had grave implications not only for the institutional setting but also
for private interests in the locality. The killing of Cauzo illustrates the intensity
47
of the local conflict. The violence has prompted the Commission on Elections
(Comelec) to postpone the plebiscite to an unspecified date after the May 2013
elections. The governor has brought the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled
in April 2014 that the entire province of Nueva Ecija, and not just the residents of
48
Cabanatuan, should participate in the plebiscite.
Local entanglements also figured in the Maguindanao massacre in November
2009. Because the gubernatorial elections set for May 2010 augured what
Eva-Lotta Hedman calls “a moment of (would be) change and turnover in the
wider context of a deeply entrenched authoritarian enclave, or so-called ‘war-
49
lord bailiwick’,” the stakes were high for the incumbent power-holder. Both
sides in this political contest, the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus, belonged
to Lakas-Kampi-CMD, the political party of then president Arroyo, who report-
edly tried but failed to mediate the conflict. Observers believe the massacre
could have been averted had the national directorate of the ruling coalition
been able to strike a compromise between the two sides. Evidently the political
actors in the capital failed. The Mangudadatus refused to heed the appeal of the
Ampatuans for Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu not to file a certificate of candidacy
and contest the governorship of Maguindanao. The Ampatuan patriarch, Andal
Sr., wanted the position he was about to vacate to be handed to his son, Andal Jr.
46. Philippine Daily Inquirer 2012 (Eyed).

47. The CPJ 2012 classifies Cauzo’s death under “motive unconfirmed.” Fatima Reyes reports that
“Cabanatuan City mayor Julius Vergara had been pushing for the HUC conversion while guber-
natorial re-electionist Aurelio Umali was opposing the measure. Meanwhile, Bautista is
running against Umali’s wife, Czarina, for a congressional seat in Nueva Ecija.” The chair of the
Commission on Elections, Sixto Brillantes Jr., is quoted as saying, “Siyempre may politics.
Pwede ba namang plesbicite na nag-aaway ang mayor at governor walang politics? (Of course
this involves politics. Would you allow a plebiscite when the mayor and the governor are fight-
ing and say no politics?).” Reyes 2012.
48. Merueñas 2014.
49. Hedman 2009.
The ideal scenario for them was for the younger Ampatuan to run unopposed.
But Mangudadatu had seen this as his opportunity to wrestle power from the
Ampatuans and they would not back down.
The military and police knew there would be a violent confrontation.
Sensing trouble, the Mangudadatus sought security for the party that would file
the candidacy of Esmael Mangudadatu. Believing that the presence of represen-
tatives from the mass media would be a deterrent, they invited as many
journalists as were interested to report on the filing of Mangudadatu’s candi-
dacy. A convoy of several journalists and mass media personnel accompanied
Esmael’s wife, sisters, lawyers, and friends on their way to the Commission on
Elections. The strategy failed and all thirty-two members of the party—Mangu-
dadatu’s wife and associates included—were murdered. Eliminating Manguda-

datu as an electoral rival for the governorship was the precipitating factor in this
massacre, with journalists as the collateral victims.
In the aftermath of the Maguindanao massacre, the Arroyo administration
vacillated in arresting the suspects—suggesting perhaps that the central power
was weighing its options vis-à-vis the local strongmen whose support had to be
50
considered. Rather than arrest the suspected mastermind, Andal Ampatuan Jr.,
presidential assistant for Mindanao Jesus Dureza was sent to plead with the
Ampatuans to surrender Andal Jr. to the authorities. The Arroyo administration
also declared a state of emergency in the province to effect control. It took two
51
days for the former president to issue a formal statement about the massacre.
Apparently central state actors were at a loss in dealing with this unprecedented
level of violence.
The central state’s inability to exercise any influence in the Maguindanao
electoral contest and its failure to intervene effectively in the wake of the mur-
ders suggests that—despite an earlier period of central state support and
52
patronage—the mass murder in Maguindanao was a local event. Members of
the state apparatus may have been directly involved in the killings, but even if
true, the aim would have been the elimination of enemies of a local power-
holder not of enemies of the state.
The Maguindanao massacre case, which is currently being heard in a special
court in Metro Manila, may be considered an outlier in relation to the usual
murder of mass media practitioners in the Philippines. Although the Maguinda-
nao massacre is a local event analogous to the killing of most other journalists, it
50. Abinales’s 2000 seminal work on Mindanao demonstrates that local strongmen or bosses are
susceptible to the vicissitudes of national politics during elections or when the central state ac-
tors withdraw support in favor of the local strongman’s rival.
51. Robles 2011. Eight days after the massacre Andal Ampatuan Jr. was arrested, brought to Metro
Manila, and charged with the murders. Two weeks after the massacre six members of the
Ampatuan family, including the patriarch, Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., were arrested,
brought to Metro Manila, and similarly charged.
52. Amado Mendoza also views the Maguindanao massacre as a local event fueled by the central
state: “If we locate the Ampatuans within the national political economy, they are actually at the
bottom of the political ‘food chain’. They enjoy local power on the say-so of the powers-that-be
in the Presidential Palace.” Mendoza 2012, 80. Nevertheless, Mendoza concludes that “local
powers-that-be appear to be responsible for the murder of journalists.” Ibid., 84.
is atypical. Most journalists have been assassinated singly rather than en masse.
We focus on these single assassinations for the remainder of this article.
Impunity’s Circumscribed Reach

The failings of the criminal justice system in the Philippines have to be taken
into account in connection with the repeated murder of journalists in the coun-
try. In the case of the sixty-eight individually targeted journalists who were killed
“in the line of duty” from 1998 to 2012 based on CMFR data, the status of the
court case is known in thirty-eight, or slightly over half of the cases. The degree
of impunity is indexed by the fact that, of the murders committed during this
fourteen-year period, in only seven cases (10 percent) was the assailant con-
victed. Five cases were dismissed, and ten cases were archived. In three cases
the accused was acquitted. Even in the handful of convictions, the “real” instiga-
tors of the crime could very well have escaped conviction. At best, partial justice
has been served in these few convictions.
Structural factors appear to generate impunity. The authoritarian Marcos re-
gime bequeathed the legacy of an all-powerful and unaccountable military and
political machinery. The downfall of Marcos has resulted in increasing press
freedom since 1986, but elements of the military and political establishments,
who have the country’s entire territory as their field of action, refused to counte-
nance the actions of persons deemed enemies of the state. Summary executions
and disappearances have occurred and gone unaccounted for even after 1986.
However, this type of impunity has direct relevance to national killings. In con-
trast, the murder of journalists is best understood as tied to impunity at the local
level, although not totally independent of forces that operate at the level of the
central state.
One of the seven cases of conviction demonstrates the local dynamics at
work in the murder and in attempts to obstruct justice. Edgar Damalerio, 32,
managing editor of the weekly newspaper Zamboanga Scribe and a commenta-
tor on dxKP radio station in Pagadian City, was killed by a single bullet wound to
his left torso on 13 May 2002. The two witnesses riding in Damalerio’s jeep
when he was shot, Edgar Amoro and Edgar Ongue, identified the gunman as lo-
cal police officer Guillermo Wapile. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI)
recommended that the suspect be charged. But this did not happen—sugges-
tive of the weakness of the central state at this juncture. Rather Wapile was
53
placed in the custody of the local police superintendent, Asuri Hawani.
Damalerio had criticized corruption among local politicians and the police;
in November 2001, for instance, he had filed a complaint against the allegedly
anomalous purchase by the Pagadian City government of six passenger jeep-
neys. Damalerio was clearly a thorn in the side of the local regime and was
therefore removed from the scene through murder, consistent with the Bjørns-
54
kov and Freytag model. Not unexpectedly, local power-holders extended
53. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility 2002.

54. Bjørnskov and Freytag 2010.
protection to the alleged assailant. The two witnesses were threatened and a
possible third witness was killed in August that year. Damalerio’s widow,
Gemma, went into hiding in another province under the central government’s
protection program.
On 30 January 2003 the Pagadian City regional trial court ordered Wapile’s
arrest, but he managed to escape and evade arrest for more than a year. The
Metro Manila–based Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ) launched a
campaign called “Operation: Countdown Damalerio,” which called on national
media organizations to help raise public awareness about the case. By mid
2004, with a missing suspect and no leads, the case became “dormant.” On 5
February 2005, Amoro, one of the witnesses, was killed by gunmen, leaving only
one witness who could testify in court.

On 14 February 2005 the Supreme Court granted a request the FFFJ had filed
on behalf of Damalerio’s widow to transfer the trial from Pagadian City to Cebu
City. This insulated the case from the interference of local actors, whose effec-
tive reach was limited by space and scale. The trial finally opened in June. On 29
November 2005 Cebu City Regional Trial Court judge Ramon Codilla convicted
Wapile for the murder of Damalerio and sentenced him to life in prison. Wapile
is serving his sentence at the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa City.
Of the seven convictions from 1998 to 2012, it is noteworthy that two jour-
nalists—Odillon Mallari (15 February 1998, General Santos City) and Frank
Palma (25 April 1999, Bacolod City)—do not appear in the CPJ list even under
motive unconfirmed. Information from CMFR indicates that Mallari’s assailants
admitted they killed him in retribution for the alleged rape of a girl in Malita,
Davao del Sur, but was never charged because of his “strong connection.”
Palma’s killer was a neighbor who, according to the CMFR case description, ap-
peared drunk at the time and claimed his act was one of self-defense as the
journalist had shot him. (The CPJ also categorizes the murder of George
55
Benaojan, 1 December 2005, Talisay City, Cebu, as motive unconfirmed. )
We are left with four cases with motive confirmed: Edgar Damalerio (13 May
2002, Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur); Klein Cantoneros (2 March 2005,
Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte); Marlene Garcia-Esperat (24 March 2005,
Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat); and Armando “Rachman” Pace (18 July 2006,
56
Digos City, Davao del Sur). All four victims had spoken out against alleged cor-
ruption. In two cases, both of which were heard in the same place as the victim’s
work and murder, only one of the suspects was apprehended and sentenced by
the local court: in Cantoneros’s case, only one of three gunmen was convicted;
55. The fact sheet from the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (2005 [George]) indi-
cates that Benaojan “might have been killed in relation to his job as a bagman of a former local
Bureau of Customs official” and that Benaojan “abused his radio program to extort favors from
local officials.” However, “his colleagues say that his attacks on the Bureau of Customs may
have had something to do with his death.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (2005
[Benaojan]) reports that it is still investigating this case because Benaojan also ran several busi-
nesses and the motive for the killing might not have been due to his work as a journalist.
56. Interestingly all four cases with convictions are from Mindanao. No other part of the country
had cases of judicial convictions with confirmed motives.

in Pace’s case, a sixteen-year-old had witnessed the murder and identified one
of two motorcycle-riding assailants. In the case of ombudsman-turned-journal-
ist Garcia-Esperat, four suspects, including an army sergeant, were arrested and
said to have confessed their involvement. Murder charges were filed against two
officials of the Department of Agriculture for being behind the murder, but a
judge dismissed the charges on the day prior to his transfer to another jurisdic-
tion. The ruling was announced much later, prompting the victim’s lawyer to
refer to the dismissal as “highly questionable and suspicious” and a “miscarriage
of justice.”
The four assailants of Garcia-Esperat were tried and convicted in Cebu City,
as in the case of Damalerio. These convictions and the shift of the ongoing trial
of the Maguindanao massacre to Metro Manila rather than Mindanao or some

other location suggest that impunity may be put in check (and convictions got-
ten) when those involved in a case are removed from the site of the conflict and
the judicial proceedings are transferred to a neutral location. In other words,
geography may spell the difference: a transfer of legal jurisdiction can remove
the case from the web of relationships, alliances, enmities, and reciprocities
that results in a murdered journalist and keeps justice at bay. Note that given
this web of ties the central state’s intervention may be limited as long as a case
remains in the turf of the local power-holder. As seen in Damalerio’s case, the
central state’s strategic intervention through the Supreme Court was to desig-
nate Cebu City as the site of judicial proceedings, which removed the case from
its local entanglements in Pagadian City. This approach is not a guarantee that
justice will be served fully, especially when there is corruption in the legal sys-
tem itself. Nonetheless, it points out that the system of impunity is a largely local
phenomenon, subject to a delimited spatial and temporal grid.
The Geography of Killings

Because the killings of journalists are primarily an outcome of local conflicts,
they are the polar opposite of the national killings identified in Anderson’s Thai-
land schema. To understand the local dynamics behind these crimes, it is
important to disaggregate the data and begin to identify the distinct characteris-
tics of each crime. In this section the killings are analyzed in their spatial
dimension.
Except for one murder that took place in Malabon in March 2011, no other
mass media practitioner was killed in Metro Manila during the 1998–2012 pe-
riod. At the same time, few of these assassinations occurred in remote
hinterlands. Of the sixty-eight single assassinations from 1998 to 2012, twenty-
six occurred in Luzon, eight in the Visayas, and thirty-four in Mindanao. In all,
twenty-four murders took place in municipal (non-city) locations, while forty-
four (close to two-thirds) occurred in chartered cities. Thus the violence against
journalists with motives confirmed is predominantly an urban phenomenon
but outside the national capital.
Based on the legal class of these cities—whether these are component cities
or highly urbanized cities (HUCs) that are autonomous from the provincial gov-

ernment—the data indicate that fourteen (about one-fifth) of the murders
occurred in HUCs; while fifty-four (close to fourth-fifths) of the killings took
place in municipalities and cities under the provincial government. The killing
of a journalist, targeted singly, tends to be a provincial city or town event. How-
ever, HUCs in Mindanao have seen comparatively high figures, particularly in
General Santos City (four) and Davao City (three).
When seen in terms of provinces (excluding Metro Manila), journalists have
been killed in thirty-nine out of the eighty provinces in the country (48.8 per-
cent): nineteen in Luzon, thirteen in Mindanao, and seven in the Visayas. As
Lagman and his colleagues have noted suggestively, although using a database
that differs from ours, media killings have occurred in “first class provinces,” rel-
Table 3. List of provinces classified according to whether a journalist has been

killed, by region, 1998–2012.
Source: Based on Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility 2012.

57
atively affluent settings. That incomes are higher in the sites of these killings is
implicit in the fact that the confirmed deaths have taken place in largely urban
spaces rather than in lower-income rural locations.
In terms of the country’s major island groups, journalists have been killed in
half of Luzon’s thirty-eight provinces; half of Mindanao’s twenty-six provinces;
and 37.5 percent of sixteen provinces in the Visayas. Thus, the murders have
been committed nationwide and not just in Mindanao, which often has been as-
sociated with political violence.
The distribution of places where no journalist was killed between 1998 and
2012 is of great interest. Excluding the National Capital Region (NCR), there is
no record of a journalist being killed in forty-six provinces across all sixteen re-
gions of the country, as shown in table 3 (above). In two regions, Cagayan Valley
and the Cordillera Autonomous Region, no killings at all were reported. In only
thirty- six provinces was a journalist killed during the period under study. As
mentioned earlier, among the component cities and municipalities of Metro
Manila (NCR), no journalist has been killed except in Malabon.
Any of the places listed in column 2 in table 3 could have witnessed a journal-
ist’s murder during the period of our study, but none did. One wonders why
not? Why would the Cordillera and all of Cagayan Valley—regions known for
having warlords and political dynasties—have seen not a single journalist assas-
sinated? The answer requires a thorough examination of local circumstances
—political hegemony, rival claimants to power, competition over lucrative in-
dustries and resources, overall levels of socioeconomic development, and
other factors—to explain the occurrence or nonoccurrence of this crime. The
answer cannot be provided in this article, but the geography of killings dis-
cussed here unsettles the presumed linkage between violence against
journalists and state repression.
Bossism and Murders

In analyzing local politics, John Sidel has argued that “bossism” involves “preda-
tory power brokers who achieve monopolistic control over both coercive and
58
economic resources within given territorial jurisdictions or bailiwicks.” The
power of a local boss rests more on “inducements and sanctions at his disposal
59
than on affection or status.” The boss, Sidel asserts, is an excellent secular
leader who depends almost entirely on blatant inducements, on the one hand,
and threats, on the other hand, to move people to his objectives. In contrast to
the clientelist perspective that regards violence as the result of a breakdown in
patron–client relations, bossism views violence or coercion as a necessary tool
in electoral competition, economic exploitation, and social relations.
For Sidel the ascendancy of local elites can be traced historically to the struc-
tural conditions that facilitated its emergence and entrenchment in the
twentieth century, particularly the survival of private, personal control over the
57. Lagman et al. 2013, 28.

58. Sidel 1999, 19.
59. Ibid., 19; see Rocamora 1995, xxi.
instruments of coercion and taxation. Under American colonial rule many of
these local elites won in both local and national elections. They retained their
Spanish-era discretionary powers over law enforcement, public works, and tax-
ation, but this time they were free from the meddling of parish priests and with
the full authority to appoint police officers within their respective jurisdictions.
Finally, Sidel argues, bossism reflects a common conjuncture in state formation
and capitalist development, i.e., the subordination of the state apparatus to
elected officials against the backdrop of primitive accumulation, which means
the subordination of the state apparatus to the bosses (rather than the other
way around) in the latter’s pursuit of power and wealth.
While bossism may explain why journalists are killed in areas ruled by local
elites or political dynasties, it is curious that no journalists were killed during

the period under study in the very areas where bossism has been a prominent
feature of the local political landscape: Ilocos Sur and Cavite. Might bossism, if it
continues to exist in these areas, not require the murder of journalists? Why
would candidates and supporters be killed especially in election-related vio-
lence in these provinces, yet there were no media killings?
Cavite illustrates that bossism and its coercive powers are limited within its
domain. In a province long noted for the physical elimination of political ene-
mies such as mayors, chiefs of police, and barangay captains and their kin and
allies, it may be expected that those who threaten or at least criticize local bosses
are sure candidates for political assassination. Why, then, has no mass media
practitioner been killed in Cavite? One possible answer may be the province’s
geographic proximity to Metro Manila. With the expansion of the metropolitan
area, Cavite has become a suburb inextricably linked to the capital. Cavite has
seen the emergence of dense industrial centers and residential estates whose
60
workers commute to and from Metro Manila daily. As a result, Manila-based
media outfits have covered news in the province, obviating the need for local ra-
dio stations and newspapers. Because news about the province has been
handled by nationwide media organizations, media personnel for all intents
and purposes have been beyond the reach of local bosses.
As in Cavite, there was a time when politically motivated violence flourished
in Ilocos Sur. Scores of supporters of contending political families were killed,
particularly during election campaign periods, such that the province was often
put under the supervision of the Commission on Elections. Since the turn of the
present century, however, Ilocos Sur has been conspicuous in its absence from
the list of provinces with mass media killings. In this case, it would appear that
the consolidation of local political power has reached the point that no rival
claimants to power have been able to mount a challenge to the power-holders:
members of the local elite have apparently succeeded in apportioning local gov-
ernment positions among themselves. Ilocos Sur has the distinction of having
had the highest number of unopposed candidates in the last two elections of
60. Coronel 1995, 11.

Table 4. News organizations of journalists killed, by major island
group, 1998–2012.
Source: Based on CFMR 2012.

61
2010 and 2013. In the May 2013 elections, eighteen mayoralty candidates out
of the province’s two cities and thirty-two municipalities ran unopposed; of this
number, fourteen were re-elected incumbents, while the remaining four cam-
paigned to replace their relatives. (Of the latter four, three already held the
62
position of vice-mayor.) Nowhere was this phenomenon more clearly demon-
strated than in the town of San Vicente, where all the candidates from mayor
down to councilors ran unopposed. Governor Ryan Luis Singson and his allies
reportedly dominate just over half of the province’s thirty-two municipalities
63
(54.5 percent). That candidates for local offices faced no political opposition is
a strong indicator of consolidated local power. With no challenger, no journalist
need be killed, despite the power of local bosses.
An alternative explanation to the curious cases of Cavite and Ilocos Sur could
be that the greater number of social welfare programs in those regions has
made the locals content. According to the Local Governance Performance Man-
agement System (LGPMS) report, the social governance performance of both
provinces in 2012 is rated as “high to excellent.” This means that both provinces
devote most of their resources in support of health and education services,
housing and basic utilities, and peace, security, and disaster management pro-
64
grams.
This contentment, however, must not be understood simply as another strat-
egy of elite machination but may in fact be a product of what Nathan Quimpo
calls contested democracy, or how the rule of the elites, even though they are
dominant, has been and is continuously being challenged by the poor and
65
marginalized. Once prohibited under martial law, contestation—a necessary
61. Rabe 2010.

62. Uyan 2013.
63. Comelec 2013; GMA Network 2013.
64. The LGPMS Social Governance Report on Ilocos Sur may be accessed here: www.blgs.
gov.ph/lgpmsv2/appshome/report/rpt_sumprov_eslgpr.php?frmIdCatArea=4&fSumRptType
=P&frmIdDcfCode=9&frmIdRegion=2&frmIdProvince=19&frmIdPerfArea=3; the LGPMS
Social Governance Report on Cavite here: www.blgs.gov.ph/lgpmsv2/appshome/report/rpt_
sumprov_eslgpr.php?frmIdCatArea=4&fSumRptType=P&frmIdDcfCode=9&frmIdRegion=
6&frmIdProvince=35&frmIdPerfArea=3.
65. Quimpo 2008.
feature of democracy—was institutionalized in the 1991 Local Government
Code, which mandated direct participation of civil society in local policy mak-
ing. Nongovernmental organizations and people’s organizations, most of
which, as Quimpo observes, have strong ties with various leftist movements in
the country, have been accorded automatic membership in local special bodies.
Hence, while decentralization has expanded the local elite’s access to re-
sources, the opportunities for participatory policy making have brought
tangible social benefits that meet popular demands, thus sparing local bosses
from criticism by journalists.
More detailed research is needed to explain why no journalist was murdered
in Cavite and Ilocos Sur during the period covered by this study. Clearly, though,
the simple association between bossism and media killings is unfounded.
Journalists and Professional Practice

Of the sixty-eight journalists who were singly assassinated from 1998 to 2012
(based on CMFR data), nearly three-fourths worked exclusively with radio, as
shown in table 4 (above). Proportionately speaking this pattern was most appar-
ent in Mindanao and the Visayas, although even in Luzon seven out of ten slain
journalists were also exclusively radio broadcasters. Of all journalists killed only
a handful worked in print media.
In total an overwhelming fifty-seven (or 84 percent) of mass media practitio-
ners who were murdered during this period were radio journalists. As such they
were associated with local radio stations. Lagman et al. report that, of the aggre-
gated 138 deaths they studied from 1986 to 1992, only 12 or 8 percent of the
66
journalists were connected with national or international media outlets. Thus
the journalists killed, both confirmed and unconfirmed, were predominantly
local media practitioners whose audiences were limited geographically to their
given localities. Journalists associated with national or international news me-
dia organizations are rarely targets of fatal attacks even if they are exposing
corruption at the highest levels or investigating other controversial issues. They
may even receive official commendation, as in the case of Nancy Carvajal, who
exposed the anomalous use of the Priority Development Assistant Fund (PDAF)
67
in a series of investigative reports that appeared in 2013. At the local level,
however, the dynamics are different.
Media radio broadcasting in the Philippines, in contrast to print and TV me-
dia channels, is the most dangerous branch of service. But why? The answer may
lie in the fact that radio is still the number one medium in the provinces, i.e., it is the
most effective medium for reaching the masses, given the affordability of radio for
68
the many with low incomes. Moreover, the print media may offer an inherently
safer setting, as Lagman and his colleagues explain: “The delivery of news in the
provinces in print media is significantly slower and newspaper articles and sto-
ries usually go through a more thorough filtering process and follow a
66. Lagman et al. 2013, 30.

67. Nery 2014.
68. Coronel 1996.
A Filipino journalist holds a candle tied
with a black ribbon to symbolize sym-
pathy during a vigil calling for justice to
the Maguindanao massacre victims.
Thirty-two journalists and twenty-
seven other civilians were killed in the
23 November 2009 massacre, the sin-
gle deadliest event for journalists in the
world. (Credit: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
particular news agenda, unlike in radio where the power of the microphone
69
seems to be unrestrained at times.”
Rey Rosales notes that radio talk shows in the Philippines are often used as a
70
medium to air complaints, usually against elected local officials. Because radio
stations thrive on advertisements, competition among them to top listener sur-
veys is vigorous. In fact, several of the victims were “block-time” radio
broadcasters, “block-timing” referring to the practice in which broadcasters
lease airtime from a station owner; they solicit their own commercial sponsors,
a practice that makes them into radio entrepreneurs. In this competitive arena,
the use of acerbic or combative language, combined with stinging commentar-
ies, greatly enhances the popularity of talk shows.
Political commentators, who are mostly “block-timers,” are in Resil Mojares’s
characterization typically of middle-class background “with the gift of gab and
71
an interest in politics.” Their main purpose is to shape discourse and get the
72
listener to adopt their views. A common rhetorical strategy, Mojares explains,
is to engage in “low verbal abuse…also called bomba, or ‘bombshell’,” which is
“occasioned by the performative function of political speech. Indeed, there is
much in politics that is theater, which makes out of political commentators
73
side-show performers, purveyors of irreverence and wit.” Mojares observes
that political commentary “is embedded in a larger event—the drama of fac-
69. Lagman et al., 37.

70. Rosales 2006.
71. See note 43 on block-timers.
72. Mojares 2002 (Talking), 249–50.
73. Ibid., 253.
74
tional, electoral politics.” In some sectors, however, these rhetorical strategies
cause listeners to view block-timers as less than genuine journalists: they are
“looked down upon as being nothing more than ‘paid hacks.’ For this reason,
75
block-timers are not expected to adhere to the code of ethics of journalists.”
In this political theater, the often swaggering and boisterous persona of the
radio jock attracts the attention of listeners, whose views are given dramatic ex-
pression by the radio journalist. Political commentator and radio listener
mutually define each other, even as they seem to be engaged in a semblance of
intimacy. To break this powerful dyad, assassinating the political commentator
may be the only way to break the listeners’ tie to the commentator. The first fatal
slaying of a block-timer in the Philippines occurred in 1993 during the adminis-
tration of President Fidel Ramos. It was another ten years before another
block-timer was killed: under President Arroyo (2003–2009) eleven block-tim-
ers lost their lives in violent deaths for both confirmed and unconfirmed
76
motives.
The rhetorical devices deployed by political radio commentators and their
appeal to thousands of listeners are contributing factors in the murder of broad-
cast journalists. These factors are not sufficient, however, for, as we have noted,
many provinces in the Philippines have not witnessed the killing of one radio
broadcaster or other media worker. The murder of radio commentators is un-
derstandable only when seen in the context of local conflicts among contending
power-holders.
That 37 of the 110 journalists killed from 1992 to 2012 fall in the uncon-
firmed category of the CPJ classification (see table 1 above) indicates that one-
third of journalists may have been killed for less than professional reasons. If the
Maguindanao massacre is excluded, around 47 percent of the single assassina-
tions of journalists had no confirmed motive. In these cases then, it is possible
that the journalist was killed because he was engaging in some questionable
77
practice. Alternatively, the person might have been killed for reasons com-
pletely unrelated to his or her profession as a journalist. Some, for instance,
could have been enmeshed in some local conflict or taken a partisan stand in a
conflict between local power-holders. Corruption could have played a role as
well: Media industry leaders have admitted that the practices of some mass me-
dia professionals have fallen beneath accepted standards. Thus, they imply that
78
corruption does exist in the media industry.
74. Ibid., 255.

75. Mendoza 2012, 76.
76. Lagman et al. 2013, 56.
77. Patricio Abinales recalls that in the 1980s a favorite term in the mass media to refer to the prac-
tice of extorting from a local politician with an insufficient hold on power was “attack–
collect–promote–collect” (Abinales 2013). Rolando Tolentino offers one explanation: “Be-
cause the journalist is sometimes not treated as a regular employee in his place of work, there
are corrupt practices that are spreading as normal practice. There is a radio broadcaster who
does not have a salary, and his ‘ex-deals’…are the expected replacement for his salary”
(Tolentino 2012, 106).
78. Philippine Daily Inquirer 2012 (Media).

Conclusion
Data for the 1998–2012 period show that the killings of journalists who were
singly targeted have occurred mostly in provincial cities and towns in the Philip-
pines, particularly in Luzon and Mindanao. The fallen journalists were
predominantly radio broadcasters whose usual beats were corruption and poli-
tics. Just over half of the journalists were killed in direct reprisal for their work,
while the rest were killed for unexplained reasons.
Broad structural factors may support an atmosphere of impunity that perpet-
uates these killings, factors associated with institutional characteristics and the
legal-bureaucratic state apparatus of, for want of a better term, “transitional de-
mocracies.” In these transitional societies, freedom of the press can walk and
run, but the justice system limps and staggers. Nevertheless, because the mur-
ders of journalists have not occurred uniformly throughout the country, the
theoretical schema and Philippine data presented in this article strongly point
to the proposition that these crimes must be understood as local events. The
simple association of the killings of journalists with state repression needs to be
re-thought.
Just as it has been argued that, analyzed internationally, the level of press
freedom and degree of corruption differentiate the severity of the problem
across countries, a similar differentiation may need to be made when analyzing
the internal situation in the Philippines. A different type of analysis will surface
complex factors that may explain why journalists have been killed in some
places but not in others. That the phenomenon is predominantly urban sug-
gests that where resources are more abundant the intensity of the contestation
over local power can be more intense, particularly in the context of decentral-
ization. Other local factors should also be studied more closely, including the
state of play among local political groups and power-holders or bosses and how
journalists become casualties of these contestations and struggles. We have ar-
gued that the murder of journalists who were covering politics need to be
understood broadly in relation to moves to protect, consolidate, or expand the
political and economic interests of contending local power-holders. In cases
where the journalists’ beat was corruption, the killings can be seen as an en-
forcement mechanism to remove an obstacle to a corrupt practice.
Available information indicates that attempts to evade justice are also under-
standable within local dynamics, which are bound by their own spatial and
temporal coordinates. The central state is implicated in these local conflicts, to
be sure, as many killings are intertwined with electoral contests and local gov-
ernment positions that the state sanctions and seeks to put on firm institutional
footing in the process of consolidating democratic institutions. Moreover, in
the handful of cases of conviction, the intervention of the central state has dis-
rupted local alliances that tried to protect the suspected assailant from facing
criminal proceedings.
The local character of these killings highlights the complex relationship be-
tween the central state and local government entities. Local actors are tied to
central state actors through alliances, patronage, and other means; because of

these ties and working arrangements, central state actors are constrained in
their actions and cannot directly impose the rules of the game at the local
level—even with a strong president. Since 1991 this state of affairs has institu-
tional sanction given decentralization, itself a sign of the relative strength of
local or noncentral power. Where the state does not fully cohere as one, decen-
tralization legitimizes and strengthens local power and intensifies local
contestations. Where the people cohere as one, or where local elites have
agreed to share local power, the murderous tendencies of local elites can be
muted. Journalists are more likely to be killed in the first case and their lives
spared in the second.
In other words, the situation goes beyond the formal relationship between
central and local state, for what appears is a modus vivendi between rulers of
the central state and rulers of cities and provinces, these cities and provinces be-
ing akin to principalities that, within the institutional framework agreed upon
with the central rulers, set and follow their own rules in their respective locali-
ties. The image that comes to mind is that of a property owner who cannot enter
the house that has been leased to a tenant; the tenant is able to stop the owner at
the gate. This imagery is limited, of course; but the point is that often and for
practical purposes the central state cannot exercise its power equally through-
out the state’s territory. Local strongholds can keep the central state at bay,
rendering it a state in absentia. The assumption is that central state actors want
to play by the book, or at least be seen to be playing by the book. In any event,
when journalists have been killed, local forces reigned supreme, forcing the
central state to stop at the provincial gate…even in Maguindanao in 2009. This
was the case in the many other places in the Philippines where journalists have
been murdered and the prosecution of the crime has floundered.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This work was supported by a Scholarly Work Award from the Loyola
Schools; a Merit Research Award from the Institute of Philippine Culture; and research
loads from the School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University, where the authors
are members of the faculty. We are grateful for the research assistance of Feric G. Galvez.
References
Abinales, Patricio N. 2000. Making Mindanao: Davao and Cotabato in the formation of the Philip-
pine nation-state. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
———. 2013. Email to Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr., 26 June 2013.
Anderson, Benedict. 2004 (Murder). Murder and progress in modern Siam. In Anderson 2004
(Spectre), 174–91.
———. 2004 (Spectre). The spectre of comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the world.
Philippine ed. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Behmer, Markus. 2009. Measuring media freedom: Approaches of international comparison. In
Czepek, Hellwig, and Nowak 2009, 23–36.
Bjørnskov, Christian, and Andreas Freytag. 2010. An offer you can’t refuse: Murdering journalists as
an enforcement mechanism of corrupt deals. Working Paper Series, Social Science Research
Network. Available at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1790384 (accessed 4 No-
vember 2011).
Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). 2002. Edgar Damalerio. Available at
www.cmfr-phil.org/journalistkilled/pdf/damalerio.pdf (accessed 28 March 2013).
———. 2005 (Ding). Ricardo “Ding” Uy. Available at www.cmfr-phil.org/journalist killed/pdf/uy.pdf
(accessed 4 August 2014).
———. 2005 (George). George Benaojan, 27. Available at www.cmfr-phil.org/map/profiles/inline/
pdf/2005/Benaojan,%20George%20-%20profile.pdf (accessed 4 August 2014).

———. 2012. Filipino journalists/media workers killed in the line of duty since 1986. Available at
www.scribd.com/fullscreen/59844158?access_key=key-t6awra6y8ohy0cpnf1q (accessed 8
November 2012).
———. 2014. Press freedom watch. Available at www.cmfr-phil.org/flagship-programs/freedom-
watch/ (accessed 23 August 2014).
Czepek, Andrea, Melanie Hellwig, and Eva Nowak. 2009. Press freedom and pluralism in Europe:
Concepts and conditions. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books.
Commission on Elections (Comelec). 2013. List of candidates for the 2013 national and local elec-
tions. Available at www.comelec.gov.ph/?r=Elections/2013natloc/ListofCandidates/Certified
ListofCandidates (accessed 23 April 2013).
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). 2005 (Benaojan). George Benaojan. Available at www.cpj.
org/killed/2005/george-benaojan.php (accessed 4 August 2014).
———. 2005 (Ding). Ricardo “Ding” Uy. Available at www.cpj.org/killed/2005/ricardo-ding-uy.php
(accessed 4 August 2014).
———. 2011. 70 journalists murdered in Philippines since 1992. Available at www.cpj.org/killed/
asia/philippines/murder.php (accessed 4 December 2011).
———. 2012. Julius Cauzo. Available at www.cpj.org/killed/2012/julius-cauzo.php (accessed 4 Au-

gust 2014).
Coronel, Sheila. 1996. Opinionated, rambunctious—and powerful. Nieman Reports 50 (3): 77–78.
———. 1995. Cavite: Killing fields of commerce. In Lacaba 1995, 3–27.
Esmaquel, Paterno II, Raisa Serafica, and Carmela Fonbuena. 2013. Mayor, wife shot dead at NAIA
Terminal 3 (8th update). Rappler.com. Available at www.rappler.com/nation/46316-shoot-
ing-incident-reported-at-naia-3 (accessed 7 July 2014).
Freedom House. 2013. Freedom in the world: Philippines. Available at www.freedomhouse.org/re-
port/freedom-world/2013/philippines#.U7e2_Kge47A (accessed 5 July 2014).
GMA Network. 2013. Eleksyon 2013 results — local. Available at www.gmanetwork.com/news/
eleksyon2013/results/local (accessed 17 May 2013).
Hedman, Eva-Lotta. 2009. The Maguindanao massacre, critical elections and armed conflict in the
Philippines. IDEAS reports – Situation analysis, ed. Nicholas Kitchen. LSE IDEAS SA006. Lon-
don: London School of Economics and Political Science. Available at eprints.lse.ac.uk/43685/
(accessed 7 November 2013).
Holmes, Ronald. 2011. The curious cases of Philippine civil society and decentralization. In Miran-
da, Rivera, Ronas, and Holmes 2011, 139–81.
Holtz-Bacha, Christina. 2004. What is “good” press freedom? The difficulty of measuring freedom of
the press worldwide. Paper presented at the conference of the International Association for
Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Porto Alegre, Brazil, 25–30 July 2004. Available
at www.kowi.wiso.uni-erlangen.de/publikationen/docs/good_press_freedom.pdf (accessed
14 June 1014).
Human Rights Watch. 2013. World Report 2013: Philippines. Available at www.hrw.org/world-re-
port/2013/country-chapters/philippines?page=1 (accessed 5 July 2014).
Kreuzer, Peter. 2009. Private political violence and boss-rule in the Philippines. Behemoth: A Jour-
nal on Civilisation 1:47–63.
Lacaba, Jose F., ed. 1995. Boss: 5 case studies of local politics in the Philippines. Pasig City: Philip-
pine Center for Investigative Journalism and Institute for Popular Democracy.
Lagman, Marco Stefan, et al. 2013. Filipino journalists at risk: Who and where are they? An analysis
of the killing of Filipino mediamen, Report submitted to UNESCO National Commission of the
Philippines, Manila, 30 April 2013.
Lara Jr., Francisco, and Steven Schoofs, eds. 2013. Out of the shadows: Violent conflict and the real
economy of Mindanao. London and Quezon City: International Alert.
Manasan, Rosario. 2004. Local public finance in the Philippines: Balancing autonomy and account-
ability. Discussion Paper Series 2004–42. Makati City: Philippine Institute for Development
Studies. Available at dirp4.pids.gov.ph/ris/dps/pidsdps0442.pdf (accessed 24 August 2014).
Mendoza Jr., Amado. 2012. The culture of impunity: A political economy perspective. In Rosario-
Braid, Maslog, and Tuazon 2012, 67–87.
Mendoza, Ronald, et al. 2012. Inequality in democracy: Insights from an empirical analysis of politi-
cal dynasties in the 15th Philippine Congress. Philippine Political Science Journal 33 (2):
132–45.
Merueñas, Mark. 2014. SC: All Nueva Ecija voters should take part in Nueva Ecija plebiscite for
Cabanatuan as HUC. GMA News Online, 23 April 2014. Available at www.gmanetwork.com/
news/story/358023/news/regions/sc-all-nueva-ecija-voters-should-take-part-in-plebiscite-for-
cabanatuan-as-huc (accessed 14 August 2014).
Miranda, Felipe, et al. 2011. Chasing the wind: Assessing Philippine democracy. Quezon City: Com-
mission on Human Rights of the Philippines and United Nations Development Program.
Mojares, Resil. 2002 (Talking). Talking politics. In Mojares 2002 (Waiting), 246–69.
———. 2002. Waiting for Mariang Makiling: Essays in Philippine cultural history. Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press.

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. 2004. Report on the 2004 Philippine Elec-
tions. Washington. DC: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI).
Nery, John. 2014. For pork scam exposé, Inquirer reporter is journalist of the year. Philippine Daily
Inquirer, 27 June 2014. Available at newsinfo.inquirer.net/614772/for-pork-scam-expose-in-
quirer-reporter-is-journalist-of-the-year#ixzz36waVSLkP (accessed 27 June 2014).
O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1998. Horizontal accountability in new democracies. Journal of Democracy
9 (3): 112–26.
Olea, Ronalyn. 2013. Benjaline Hernandez: Campus journalist and human rights defender. Davao
Today, 21 November 2013. Available at davaotoday.com/human-rights/benjaline-hernandez-
campus-journalist-and-human-rights-defender/ (accessed 4 August 2014).
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). 2003. P1M reward for capture of Filipino jour-
nalists’ killers. Media Alert: Journalists Under Fire. Available at pcij.org/MediaAlert/reward.
html (accessed 16 June 2014).
Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI). 2012 (Politics). Politics eyed in Nueva Ecija broadcaster’s slay. PDI,
10 November 2012: A10.
———. 2012 (Tackle). Media tackle issue of corruption. PDI, 24 November 2012. Available at
newsinfo.inquirer.net/312063/media-tackle-issue-of-corruption (accessed 30 March 2013).

Quimpo, Nathan. 2008. Contested democracy and the left in the Philippines after Marcos. Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Quitoriano, Eddie. 2013. Shadow economy or shadow state? The illicit gun trade in conflict-affected
Mindanao. In Lara and Schoofs 2013, 49–84.
Rabe, Albert. 2010. Ilocos Sur political trend threatens life and democracy. Available at pedestrian
observer.blogspot.com/2010/04/politicaldynasty-ilocos-sur-political.html (accessed 29 April
2013).
Reporters Without Borders. 2013. World press freedom index 2013. Available at en.rsf.org/press-
freedom-index-2013,1054.html (accessed 7 July 2014).
Reyes, Famita. 2012. Comelec stands by decision to postpone Cabanatuan plebiscite. Philippine
Daily Inquirer, 18 December 2012. Available at newsinfo.inquirer.net/326421/comelec-
stands-by-decision-to-postpone-cabanatuan-plebiscite (accessed 30 March 2013).
Rivera, Temario. 2011. In search of credible elections and parties: The Philippine paradox. In
Miranda, Rivera, Ronas, and Holmes 2011, 46–94.
Robles, Raissa. 2011. Part 1: The Maguindanao Massacre was a deadly quarrel inside Arroyo’s camp.
Available at raissarobles.com/2011/11/23/part.1-the-maguindanao-massacre-was-a-deadly-
quarrel-inside-arroyos-camp (accessed 2 May 2013).
Rocamora, Joel. 1995. Introduction. In Lacaba 1995, vii–xxx.
Ronas, Malaya. 2011. The never ending democratization of the Philippines. In Miranda, Rivera,
Ronas, and Holmes 2011, 95–138.
Rosales, Rey G. 2006. Shooting the messenger: Why radio broadcasting is a deadly profession in the
Philippines. Journal of Radio Studies 13 (1): 146–55.
Rosario-Braid, Florangel, Crispin C. Maslog, and Ramon R. Tuazon, eds. 2012. Crimes and unpun-
ishment: The killing of Filipino journalists. San Juan City: Asian Institute of Journalism and
Communication and UNESCO.
Roudakova, Natalia. 2009. Journalism as “prostitution”: Understanding Russia’s reactions to Anna
Politkovskaya’s murder. Political Communication 26:412–29.
Sidel, John T. 1999. Capital, coercion and crime: Bossism in the Philippines. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Smyth, Frank. 2010. Murdering with impunity: The rise in terror tactics against news reporters. Har-
vard International Review (fall): 41–45.
Sussman, Leonard R. 1991. Dying (and being killed) on the job: A case study of world journalists,
1982–1989. Journalism Quarterly 68 (1/2): 195–99.
Tolentino, Rolando. 2012. Killings of journalists, mass media and the culture of impunity. In
Rosario-Braid, Maslog, and Tuazon 2012, 102–10.
Tran, Hai, et al. 2011. Linking measures of global press freedom to development and culture: Impli-
cations from a comparative analysis. International Journal of Communication 5:170–91.
Ufen, Andreas. 2008. Political party and party system institutionalization in Southeast Asia: Lessons
for democratic consolidation in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The Pacific Review
21 (3): 327–50.
Uyan, Kat. 2013. Ilocos Sur lists biggest number of unopposed bets. Available at www.rappler.com/
nation/politics/elections-2013/24949-ilocos-sur-biggest-number-of-unopposed-bets (ac-
cessed 28 April 2013).
Wickham, Kathleen Woodruff. 2011. Murder in Mississippi: The unsolved case of Agence France
Presse’s Paul Guihard. Journalism History 37 (2): 102–12.
q

Aguilar 2014

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aguilar 2014

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [Memorial University of Newfoundland]

On: 28 January 2015, At: 03:18

Critical Asian Studies

KEEPING THE STATE AT BAY: The Killing of Journalists in

Click for updates

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2014.960719

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

KEEPING THE STATE AT BAY

The Killing of Journalists

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr., Meynardo P. Mendoza,

7. Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2013, 1.

Murder and Transitional Democracies

12. Sussman 1991.

ety model de-

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org).

Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org).

Fig. 2. Number of journalists murdered in selective countries (Philippine data excludes

Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org)

22. See cpj.org/killed/asia/pakistan/.

Source of data: Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/)

24. See cpj.org/killed/mideast/iraq/.

Local versus National Killings

29. Anderson 2004 (Murder), 185.

32. Holmes 2011.

Journalists as Victims of National Killings

41. Esmaquel et al. 2013.

46. Philippine Daily Inquirer 2012 (Eyed).

dadatu’s wife and associates included—were murdered. Eliminating Manguda-

Impunity’s Circumscribed Reach

53. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility 2002.

one witness who could testify in court.

Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 665

of the Maguindanao massacre to Metro Manila rather than Mindanao or some

The Geography of Killings

666 Critical Asian Studies 46:4 (2014)

Table 3. List of provinces classified according to whether a journalist has been

Source: Based on Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility 2012.

Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 667

Bossism and Murders

57. Lagman et al. 2013, 28.

elites or political dynasties, it is curious that no journalists were killed during

60. Coronel 1995, 11.

Source: Based on CFMR 2012.

61. Rabe 2010.

the simple association between bossism and media killings is unfounded.

Journalists and Professional Practice

66. Lagman et al. 2013, 30.

69. Lagman et al., 37.

74. Ibid., 255.

Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 673

674 Critical Asian Studies 46:4 (2014)

Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 675

———. 2012. Julius Cauzo. Available at www.cpj.org/killed/2012/julius-cauzo.php (accessed 4 Au-

676 Critical Asian Studies 46:4 (2014)

newsinfo.inquirer.net/312063/media-tackle-issue-of-corruption (accessed 30 March 2013).

Aguilar Jr. et al. / Keeping the State at Bay 677

You might also like