Lex Adonis, one of Davao City’s hard-hitting radio broadcasters, is behind bars after a court convicted him of the libel case filed by House majority leader Rep. Prospero Nograles. Adonis’s misfortune illustrates what happens when a powerful public official uses the country’s libel laws to get back at a journalist who was too poor to hire a lawyer or attend court hearings.
Related item: ‘No One to Blame But Adonis Himself — Bombo Radyo’
The police allegedly duped an elderly mother into signing documents that said the New People?s Army killed Macel and George Vigo, the two journalists murdered in June in Kidapawan. Church and human-rights groups, in a fact-finding mission, assailed the authorities for the alleged cover-up and for Oplan Bantay Laya.
By Germelina A. Lacorte
davaotoday.com
KIDAPAWAN CITY ? Norma Alave is 60 years old and has a failing eyesight. The day after her daughter Maricel ?Macel? Vigo was murdered along with her husband George, on June 19, then Philippine National Police chief Arturo Lomibao came to this city to personally hand over a 10,000-peso check supposedly from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The following day, the police summoned her to the police station and asked her to sign some documents. She was told that the papers were meant to establish that she was Macel?s mother and that George was her son-in-law. ?So I signed the documents,? Alave said, even though she couldn?t read what was written on them.
It was only later when her son Gregorio Alave, 29, found out that the documents his mother had signed included a paragraph that identified the Vigo couple?s killer as someone named Dionisio Madanguit. ?I retracted the statement because I never knew that man,? Mrs. Alave said.
This incident, according to human-rights and church groups that recently conducted a fact-finding mission in this city to investigate the killings, tended to suggest a whitewash and was meant to fit the authorities? oft-repeated line that the communist New People?s Army was behind the murder of the Vigos.
Media workers may bask in the limelight and may wield tremendous amount of influence. But, as four topnotch Davao journalists tell davaotoday.com, they are not spared from poverty and the corruption and danger that it brings.
By Grace S. Uddin
davaotoday.com
DAVAO CITY ? Print and broadcast journalists may have relative popularity or notoriety because of the power of information they wield on air or on print.? But that doesn?t mean they are spared from the same hardships suffered by ordinary Filipinos.
Four journalists here shared their own tales of coping with poverty and their meager income, and overcoming the call of the ?envelope?, or bribery.
By Cheryll D. Fiel davaotoday.com DAVAO CITY -- A tabloid circulated in this city got a beating at the City Council session early this week. Councilor Pilar Braga told the…