By Martha TeodoroBulatlat.com
MANILA — In February 1986, a Filipina columnist in Michigan was watching her nation on TV. Another, a journalist, was hiding from the police in Bacolod City and writing stories in her brain before dictating them over the phone.
In 1985, Melinda Quintos de Jesus left the Philippines to go to the United States for a fellowship. When the crisis started, she was watching the chaos from a dormitory lounge, transfixed to a cable network that had only been around for a year. It was the first year of CNN then and she remembered seeing that coverage.
On the other side of the world, Inday Espina-Varona was not watching history. She was filing a story about it.
She was working as a journalist in Bacolod City, stringing for Agence France-Presse, running a local weekly, and helping to build an alternative news network. When the news broke, she called Manila long-distance and delivered photo negatives through a small airline’s cargo service.
Negros had its own part of the People Power story, being adjacent to Leyte, the home province of the Romualdezes.
“We would make up the story in our heads. Then read it straight from the notes. That’s how we filed. We were teams of one,” Varona recalled.
They were two women in two different places, talking of one historic uprising which reverberated across the world.
What brought people to mobilize at that time?
It was the culmination of events that began with Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’ imposition of Martial Law in September 1972.
Proclamation 1081 closed down Congress, the media, and detained opposition leaders on the pretext of national security.
Ten years later, the murder of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. on August 21, 1983, sparked popular anger again.
Civil society groups, church leaders, and underground movements worked harder to organize. Marcos called a quick election in November 1985 because of mounting pressure from inside and outside the country.
There were many claims of fraud in the vote against Corazon Aquino on February 7, 1986.
On February 22, top defense officials Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos announced they were withdrawing support from Marcos after a coup they had planned went awry.
There were soon calls over Radio Veritas for civilians to head to EDSA to protect them and, by February 25, after days of enormous protests, Marcos fled Malacañang.
Aquino was sworn in as president, ending Marcos’s 20-year dictatorship.
Forty years have gone by since the mobilization and Varona has expressed dislike for the romantic terminology that is typically used to describe EDSA throughout the years. “Journalists were not the main characters,” she said.
During Martial Law, journalists had to deal with closures, monitoring, unstable economies, and political threats.
Some press freedoms were officially returned by the early 1980s, after Martial Law was lifted in 1981. However, fear and institutional control were still present. Political and economic elites still owned much of the media. Broadcast franchises were weak. Newsrooms knew what they could and couldn’t do.
Varona talked about how they cautiously tested such limitations in Bacolod City. “We were working for mainstream national and international media,” Varona said, “but our perspective was alternative.”
Correspondence, Broadcasters, Reporters Association – Action News Service (COBRA-ANS) also existed there, with media workers with national and international connections.
These local reporters were frequently the only way for people in remote locations to get news about human rights abuses to a national audience.
Broadcast anchors depended on typed “packets” of political analysis that were sent around quietly among journalists who agreed with them. “In analysis, we were alternative,” she explained. “But in the presentation, we were mainstream. We knew how to push the envelope.”
Martial Law’s legacy also had an effect on how journalists worked in the newsroom, especially women.
After the major media outlets were shut down in 1972, only newspapers that were friendly to the government were allowed to stay open. Independent voices were pushed to the side or shut out. The memories of arrests and closures stayed with people even after the easing of legal restrictions. As Varona said, “The more intense the protest movement, the braver the journalists became.”
Limitations of technology at the time added to the challenges journalists faced. Provincial reporters used operator-assisted long-distance calls to dictate stories before digital transmission. Photo negatives had to be sent to Manila and deadlines were based on flight schedules.
Filing was an exercise in persistence in and of itself.
De Jesus recalled that there weren’t many columnists doing political op-ed. The Philippines had had many famous women in public life for a long time, but the editorial pages were mostly for men.
Women writers broadened the language of political criticism by bringing up issues like education, family life, and social welfare.
“People began to write to us. They wanted to see things from a different aspect.” Before the EDSA, de Jesus was one of a tiny but important group of female columnists in Manila who were asked to write op-ed pieces for major newspapers.
But after 40 years, both agree that things have changed.
The digital age has transformed mobilization. Social media divides readers’ focus. Newsrooms are in a tough spot financially. Journalists move to different jobs or work in other countries.
The adversarial press model that came from the US, where the press has since become much less adversarial, is still a goal but there are still problems with the way it works.
“What’s in it for me? Did I get anything from EDSA? Probably that should be the first thing. We should go back to that question. Bakit hindi umabot yung dapat na gains ng EDSA sa mga tao? Because that’s really the only way that you make people absorb the importance of an event,” Varona said.
Both women agree on one important point, however: Journalism must always be about the people.
“Human rights shouldn’t be a beat. Every story should include something about human rights,” Varona expressed.
They both emphasized that EDSA was not spontaneous. After 14 years of authoritarian rule, an economic catastrophe, murder, fraud, church mobilization, underground organizing, and a press that was learning how to breathe again, monuments and anniversaries should not be the only things that keep it alive.
De Jesus even cautioned that “if we don’t preserve the memory of its significance … We’re just going to let it dry up.”
For Varona, journalists should continue performing its duty. “Journalism does not exist in a vacuum. We always reflect the society we serve,” Varona emphasized. (JDS, RVO)
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