The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has described the Philippines as the world’s “most murderous” country for reporters. But this does not cite a position that any media member under threat may own and carry a gun.
Journalists allowed to carry guns for self-defense in the wake of a growing number of murders of reporters and editors in the country does not in any way score, decrease, cut down or diminish the aggression against members of the fourth estate.
Even the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) could only tell its press members that there are provisions for safety and assistance to media workers under threat but carrying a firearm is practically not one.
The International News Safety Institute (INSI) explains it well. Journalists increasingly are being targeted in conflict largely because they have lost, in the eyes of certain elements, their status as neutral observers.
A journalist with a gun may have removed himself from this premise, as he unbuckles his cellular phone and exchanges it for a holster with .45-caliber pistol and some bullet clips. This clearly breaks the entrenched taboo against journalists carrying—and using—guns. Such a move is not beneficial to the press—or the threatened journalist—it will only place their lives and their peers further in danger.
True, we journalists have to protect ourselves because the government does not protect us anymore and so the need for guns protruding in our shirts. But wait, this will only open the floodgates of never-ending cycle of attacks against us. Somehow, there are media people also who are slack, immature and reckless, and arming them might only bring harm or injury to their colleague seated next to them.