Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said every violent attack against a Filipino journalist is investigated immediately by government law enforcement agencies.
“The Presidential Task Force on Media Security created under AO (Administrative Order) No.1 has been doing its job diligently and has helped in the prosecution of many cases of media violence,” Guevarra pointed out.
Guevarra’s comment was asked by journalists covering the Department of Justice (DOJ) after the United States-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its Global Impunity Index and ranked the Philippines as the seventh most dangerous country for journalists to be in.
Guevarra said Filipino journalists “are in the better position to say whether their lives are in mortal danger as they go about practicing their profession.”
He said the prosecution of Filipino journalists for libel should not be considered as government attacks against media.
“Facing libel cases in court is not unusual for journalists anywhere in the world,” he stressed.
“These legal actions (for libel) are mostly initiated by private persons who think that their reputation has been besmirched,” he said.
The Global Impunity Index is topped by Somalia and then followed by Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh, and India.
CPJ explained that the Global Impunity Index “calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population.”
“For this index, CPJ examined journalist murders that occurred between Sept. 1, 2011, and Aug. 31, 2021, and remained unsolved,” it said.
“Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on the index,” it added.
The list showed that the Philippines which has a population of 109.6 million has 13 unresolved murders of journalists.
CPJ defines murder “as a deliberate killing of a specific journalist in retaliation for the victim’s work.”
“This index does not include cases of journalists killed in combat or while on dangerous assignments, such as coverage of protests that turn violent,” it added.