Journalists were caught unprepared for martial law
Press behind bars
Resil Mojares was one of only two Cebu journalists arrested just after martial law was declared. The other was Gary Bacolod.
Journalists were caught unprepared for martial law
PACHICO A. SEARES
Sept. 19, 2013
Interview with Resil B. Mojares by Pachico A. Seares
Isolating people from one another
What martial law does when press freedom is abolished is not simply to suppress the flow of information but to isolate people from one another, turn them into solitary individuals, without the support of an organized community (which is possible only with communication)… That is when fear becomes effective.
Being prepared for martial law
Most everyone was talking of martial law before it happened but, without precedence, no one seriously believed it would happen, and people were caught unprepared. ML depends on surprise and extraordinary measures. One can’t be fully prepared for it.
Journalism not the main job
Apart from writing opinion columns and feature articles for a number of newspapers, I had my first job as news writer for dyRF, in 1964 when I was a student, though this lasted only for a month or two. Given the pay for journalists at the time, I never really considered journalism as a main job but more of a sideline in teaching (which did not pay well either), which was in turn secondary to what was really (and still is) my primary interest, writing.
Writing journalism and its weakness
I value my experience in journalism. Writing journalism is like being directly engaged in an ongoing conversation with a defined and living readership. You get immediate feedback, you can talk about diverse topics, try out ideas, elaborate, clarify, and quickly correct yourself, and you are “in the middle of things,” as it were, abreast with the daily flow of events.
But in this also lies journalism’s weakness. It is biased in favor of events rather than the structures. Borne along by the quick, unceasing succession of events, it tends to stay on the surface, without sufficient time and space to disengage and examine the deep-lying structures that underlie the events.
Journalists and academics
Journalists are strong on speed and readability but weak in substance and depth. Academics are strong in content but weak in readability; literary writers are strong in style but weak in content; and both take forever to finish… It’s not easy finding writers who combine the virtues of all three and none of the weaknesses.
Future of print journalists
You definitely cannot compete with electronic media in reach and speed. You have to turn what print media’s disadvantages are—its slowness and localized reach—into its comparative advantage, in terms of cultivating values of deliberation, reflection and depth as well as cultivating direct, intimate relations with a well-defined, living community of readers. 