by Ed Lingao
Seven years ago, I peered out into the jungle from a cramped pickup truck, with a loaded and cocked M-16 in my hand and my heart in my throat. All around me, in the darkness, a hundred eyes seemed to peer back from behind every tree in the forests of Basilan.
It was not one of my prouder moments, and I knew there could be ethical ramifications; but at that time and place it seemed to make all the sense in the world to hold on to that rifle. Journalists are trained to shoot with the pen; give us a gun and most of us would try to write a profile about it.
But I had taken the mayor’s warning to heart. It was night, the road had disappeared, and we were in Abu Sayyaf/Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)/bandit country. Just hold on to it, he said. When the shooting starts, you will know what to do. Behind us, in a dump truck with the rest of the mayor’s security detail, my assistant cameraman was offered an M-60 light machine gun. He wisely chose to hang on to his tripod instead.
To top off all the ironies of that night, the mayor was just headed back to his town after a meeting in Basilan’s capital of Isabela. He was just going home.
Long after, I would ask myself: what would I have done had there been an ambush? Would I have jammed the barrel out the window and let loose a wall of lead like Rambo on a happy day, or would I have fallen to the floor, curled up like one of those hard-shelled centipedes, and wept?
Seven years later, we faced the same dilemma. A small group of print and television journalists had converged again in Jolo to cover the kidnapping of an ABS-CBN 2 news team. They were all familiar faces, veterans of past conflicts. But it sometimes takes a veteran to know when the odds are stacked against him. Now we were all targets for anyone with a gun—and in Jolo, everyone has more than one.
So one night, we called a meeting. Colleagues from ABS-CBN 2, GMA-7, ABC-5, The Philippine Daily Inquirer—everyone was a competitor, yet at this moment, everyone was an ally. The first thing we agreed on was that we should all work together to see this crisis through. The issues involved here were bigger than any ratings game. So everyone should know where everyone was at all times. Preferably, we would travel as a group.
Then someone popped the question—should we not arm ourselves? At least give ourselves a fighting chance? After all, this was Jolo, where guns were aplenty. If goons could easily get guns, so could we. The debate went around and around, with just as many for as against. The pros argued for an active defense while the cons pointed out that handguns are not a good match against rifles, especially if you are trapped in a vehicle and the bad guys are standing around you. In the end, we decided to ask Task Force Comet for a marine security detail to tag along wherever we went.
I realize that editors would balk at the kinds of debates that go on at ground level among the newsgatherers in conflict areas. After all, I am an editor myself, and many times I have had these uncomfortable thoughts too. But coverage in conflict areas has its own dynamics, and while we would always argue against a double standard, it would be more unfair to foist the same set of expectations for those who cover press conferences on those who cover conflict.
Together
Travelling as a group, for example.
It goes against the grain for a journalist to surrender his competitiveness and roam with a pack. At least, it should. That smacks so much of cartel and pack journalism, where stories that are submitted differ only in their bylines. Still, on a dangerous deployment, I would at times consider travelling with a group of other journalists, perhaps from another medium like print or radio, although preferably not from the competition. But on a particularly hazardous assignment, I may merge my team with a much bigger group, sometimes to include the competition.
This does not happen often; like everything in conflict coverage, one considers everything logically, then weighs what it feels in the gut. But it does happen, and only someone who has never left a desk would call that cartel journalism. Ironically, I have seen more of that in beats where the most hazardous thing a reporter faces is a paper cut.
This sometimes happens in conflict coverage, not because of laziness or the mutual fear of being scooped, but because of the basic idea that there is safety in numbers. These are the times when it is more important to watch, than to stab, each others’ backs.
In 2000, the unimaginable happened in Jolo, Sulu: journalists from bitterly competing networks and wire agencies banded together, covered together, ate together, and even slept together in one room. It was the height of a military offensive in Jolo, and authorities had banned all newsmen from the islands.
The threats came from all sides. The military had orders to pick up any journalist found in Jolo and to deport him or her to Zamboanga. The Abu Sayyaf probably had the same orders, except that journalists were to be deported to their lair for an involuntary vacation in their mountain resorts.
I remember how we watched each others’ backs, not for fear of being scooped, but for fear of losing more colleagues. When soldiers approached, we ran together and hid. When travelling to the outskirts of Jolo (and there, it seems everything is in the outskirts), we took comfort in our collective misery.
When I disappeared for a few hours to phone-in some reports, my colleagues, including Raffy Tima of competing station GMA-7, looked for me for hours, before asking the local police for help in finding me. “Inisip na lang namin, sana hindi pinahirapan si Ed (We just hoped they did not make Ed suffer),” recalled former Inquirer shooter Dennis Sabangan. It was said half in jest, but there was a grain of truth to it. Then, as now, Jolo is not a place to let your guard down.
In Baghdad, my cameraman and I adopted a Lithuanian journalist, named Luthos. He seemed lost at first, until we learned that he had covered alone in Afghanistan and Chechnya. He would join us in cooking breakfast in our hotel balcony while the bombs fell. Laughing and joking we hardly understood each other, but kept each other sane.
A different reality
And then there are the escorts.
This will always be a touchy issue. The easiest thing for a journalist to do is to ask for an escort from local authorities, assuming they are friendly and not likely to be your next kidnappers. But riding around with an armed escort is not likely to endear you to the local populace. It also limits the places you can go to. You cannot, for example, talk to rebel sympathizers with a marine hovering behind you. But they provide a sense of security that, at times, keeps bad people away. Escorts give you more freedom and security to move; but they limit your access to real information. Plus, you never know who they are reporting to while you do your own reporting. Obviously, there is a trade-off; it’s a matter of deciding what you want to achieve in a particular coverage. In the case of the ABS-CBN 2 hostage crisis, we decided it was more prudent not to add to the list of hostage victims.
The fact is that conflict reporting presents a unique set of realities and demands a different set of responsibilities from those that journalists lounging in press offices in Manila face. For this reason, conflict journalists require more lattitude, more flexibility, and more freedom to do their job and come home alive. But at the same time we need to demand more accountability, more responsibility, and more discernment so that they do their job well and not endanger the people they report on, or the next team that takes their place.
If we allow conflict journalists all these freedoms, we should also impose a higher set of standards on them.
Better, more contextual reporting, for example. The bane of conflict reporting is the police reporter who thinks that there is no difference between covering crimes and covering conflict. During former President Joseph Estrada’s all-out war against the MILF, some TV networks took the alarming step of sending police reporters to cover the war in Mindanao. Some fared well, and moved on to better things; others showed that they should have just stayed in their favorite police precincts instead of inflicting themselves on an already troubled land by merely reporting on body counts and stereotypes. A good number of them could not tell the MILF from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) from the Abu Sayyaf. I thought that was an exaggeration, until I heard the anchor of a major TV network state, on the air, that they were all the same since they were all Muslims. Edwin Angeles would have scratched his head if he were still alive.
And, preparation. A lot of it. How many reporters go to a war zone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the issues involved? How many reporters know about the 1996 MNLF peace deal, and why it was so troubled from the start; or the 1976 Tripoli Agreement? How many reporters even know where Tripoli is? How many know of the history of the Tausugs, and why they see themselves as the warrior society? Why do they seem to love weapons so much? I would not answer these questions, because every journalist who dares to travel to these places should have, at least, the courage to visit the library or do research on the net.
Then there is the physical preparation. I always carry a can or two of food in a pouch when I travel outside city limits, along with a camelbak full of water. Plus extra cellphone batteries, an extra cellphone, a waterproof parka, penlight batteries, a cellphone charger that works on penlight batteries, two flashlights, an emergency foil blanket that costs P200, and my own handycam with its own set of batteries and tapes. This is my primary load, designed to keep me alive, keep me in touch, and keep me and my equipment working. If I still have the space, then I bring an extra shirt, and maybe an MP3 player. When they ask me why I look like I am going off to war, I reply that I am.
Lastly, conflict journalists and their respective media outlets need to show much more accountability. Why do the TV networks never wonder why some reporters almost always seem to have those spectacular footage of firefights, where camera angles are so well crafted that they almost seem…directed! On many an occasion, I have had frontline officers offer to stage a “simulation” so that I would have good “combat” footage. They almost seem offended when I say no. What is wrong with that? They wonder. They have done it for this or that famous reporter in the past. This is war, by God! If you did not catch it on tape, we will gladly hold another one for you!
Unfortunately, war reporting has taken on the sexy image it does not really deserve, sending the ambitious but not necessarily scrupulous or bright in the direction of the gunfire. They forget that we cover wars because we want them to stop. We cover wars because we wish that someday we would no longer have to.
- Ed Lingao is the head of the ABC-5 News Operations department. |
