What makes the NPC fail
insidetheclub
What makes the NPC fail
The tragedy is that every member of the Press Club is aware of his Rights. He complains loudly about bad meals, about prices and about the lack of facilities in his club. Yet, nobody has ever thought of the need for supporting the club adequately. The P1-a-month fee is entirely out of the line with present needs of the club and yet every attempt to raise funds was met with strong opposition. We want a first-class club on a tenth-rate fee. We want something for nothing. Nobody ever got that. We won’t either.
The result of these is that the administrations of the club have depended entirely on the personality of whoever was President of the club. IN other words, group action never ruled the Press Club. A careless President meant a careless carefree administration. A fighting President meant a good administration. The members could not care less. They left everything to the President and felt that their only duty was to gripe.
I have almost stopped going to the National Press Club. It saddens me to have to say this but it hurt me every time I witnessed members taking the club as if it were a business establishment that they patronize and from which they could expect the best for the least amount of money. The personal hygiene of the members left much to be desired and this was obvious from the cigarette butts all over the place, the filth that could only have come from the lack of cooperation from the general patronage.
It is strange that the library, for instance, is the very same library that it was when we put up for the first time. Many good books are no longer in the shelves because some members have taken them home for their personal libraries. On had a right to expect that the library would receive personal donations from the members instead of being pirated of valuable editions. We once tried the honor system in the library but it turned out that even with the usual library registry rules, we were to lose our books.
The National Press Club is saddled with debts incurred by members who signed chits without regard to their ability to pay. The SWA (Social Welfare Administration) had nothing on the NPC. For many, the Press Club was for exploitation. Their answer to requests for payment was to stop going to the Press Club and to denounce it for arrogance or for unreasonableness on members.
The quality of the membership deserves one paragraph. Every self-proclaimed newspaperman feels that he has a “right” to membership and the officers of the club felt that some persons “have to be” taken in. It has never occurred to anyone that bad eggs should be eliminated from the membership and barred from entering the club in order to make the club a pleasant place for the rest of the newspapermen. We have had so many sad experiences with drunks and deadbeats that one would think we have learned a lesson but the truth is that we have not.
It has come to a point where members of the club don’t dare take their friends to the club because of the possibility that they would be accosted for a “touch” or perhaps engaged in a debate on subjects that have little or no interest for the guest. There was a time when foreign correspondents felt it a “must” to visit the National Press Club. Now, it is safer to show them the building and then detour them to more pleasant places for taking meals or snacks.
The National press Club was never meant to be anything but a club. It is not, and should not be molded into a headquarters for labor activities or politics. People are supposed to go to the club for relaxation from their daily toils – to sit with friends and contemplate the passing events in comparative ease, devoid of the tensions of a newspaper assignment. We have never learned to relax in the club. We have always tried to make it a battleground for ideas instead of tired heads and aching muscles.
There are many good newspapermen with executive abilities who could make the club work but they shy away from the National Press Club because they know that they would have to work alone and against odds if they want anything done at all. Unless we remove the “gimme” attitude of the members of the club and inspired in them, instead, a desire to do their part, we shall always have the building but no National Press Club.
One of the best examples of how we have ruined our own club is the way we butt into other people’s business. Almost no one is safe in giving a party in the NPC without the danger of being invaded by uninvited gusts or “kibitzers”. We have been thrown the rule book in our insane belief that since the NPC is “ours”, we can do in it what we please. In the process, we have ruined it even for our purposes.
It is incredible that the only time we get the newspapermen to go to the NPC is during election day. And most of the members go only to vote. Throughout the year, we have a handful of people who park around the club because they’ve been used to the idea or they have nowhere else to go. During special occasions, such as Gridiron Night or some special press conference, many who attend don’t want to pay their share of the expenses because they feel they have “rights”.
Unless we learned that we can’t have a real club unless we pitched in and did our share of responsibility, we shall never have one that we can be proud of. It is pointless for anyone to devote his entire energies to making a good club if that someone finds himself alone and derided for the effort.
In retrospect, I think we made a mistake in putting up this edifice called the National Press Club. We should have put up a more modest one that we could have improved as the years went by. The brutal truth is that we made the mistake of putting up a National Press Club building before we had a National Press Club in fact. We tried to build a club around a building and failed in the process. We’re still trying but the building is the handicap. Most of us feel that we “own” a share in the glory and the advantages but not in the work necessary to keep the club going.
We might save the day for the Philippine press if we elect dedicated men who will run for office in the club for what they can do for it and not for the glory that they will heap upon themselves by winning an election. The trouble today is that so many become candidates in the hope that with victory they shall be an inch taller. We need tall men who shall guide the membership, work with vigor and selflessness, not ambitious men who will inflict themselves on the club and to hell with what happens to it.
Perhaps it is time to dissociate glory from club officership. We need a permanent board of management who shall be chosen on merit and not by popularity vote. This, we must divorce from the elective board of the club who shall decide policies of the press as a professional body and help managers of the club re-make the National Press Club into a real social residence of the members. This is how they do it in the National Press Club in
We don’t stand to move ahead with our present ways of doing things. A politics-ridden club can only head for the scrap heap, let us forget personal glory and ambition and get together in putting up a press club that we can be proud of. We have the building. We have the land. What we don’t have is the will to make the most of our gifts of the civic community and of the government. We were given a toy but we are not playing with it. We are tearing it apart, piece by piece. There is still time to save it. If we cast aside pride, we can do it. It is later than we think.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Militancy in the time of repression
insidetheclub
Militancy in the time of repression
by Satur Ocampo
Over the five decades of existence of the National Press Club, militancy in the Philippine press has had many manifestations. The inspiring examples of the militant journalism by Marcelo H. del Pilar, or "Plaridel" (after whom the NPC Plaridel Hall as named), and other members of the Propaganda Movement of the 1980s have kept such militancy alive, in varying degrees and extents, through all the years.
A distinct type of militancy, involving not just the Philippine press but the NPC specifically, is what I wish to dwell on this short piece. It's militancy of the revolutionary genre, with the interesting story of its own. It tells how the NPC leadership, and the NPC itself, became part of the then fast-growing national democratic movement. It also tells how such involvement radically transformed the worldview, lifestyle and career of the first two-term NPC president-the veritable "Batang Klub," our dear departed colleague and my comrade-in-arms, Antonio M. Zumel.
It was a time of political ferment amidst economic difficulties for the Filipino people. Ferdinand E. Marcos had just started to serve the second term as President of the
After the militant youth demonstrations had thrown a cardboard casket symbolizing the death of democracy at Marcos, the US-trained anti-riot police brutally dispersed the demonstrators, hurting and maiming many of them.
That bloody dispersal spurred another huge protest march to the
The historic event became known as the Battle of Mendiola. It signaled the beginning of the First Quarter Storm (FQS) of 1970, characterized by a series of big protest marches and demonstrations in Metro manila until March, often with violent clashes between demonstrators and armed police.
The FQS spurred the flowering of the national Democratic (ND) mass organizations, led by the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), across the country that carried on unprecedented militant protest actions.
My wife,
We also sought to unify into a progressive federation the unionized workers in the four main newspapers: the
Let Tony Zumel tell the story himself, in a brief account that he wrote for Liberation, official publication of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), in January 2000, before he passed away.
"For me, the periods from the FQS (1970) to the imposition of martial law is most important because this was when my appreciation of the Philippine society and my entire worldview underwent transformation. From being a petty-bourgeois liberal in the early part of my life, which included 18 years as journalist, I became a revolutionary of the national democratic movement by September 1972.
"I was elected president of the National Press Club o the
"What initially brought me and the NPC in contact with the ND activists was the case of the Dumaguete Times in Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental. The military arrested the entire staff and placed them incommunicado. As NPC president, I immediately issued a statement demanding the release of the young journalists. We raised a lot of noise in the media. We succeeded. It turned out that the government had no legal case against them, no matter that the staff were members of the KM.
"My association with the Dumaguete Times journalists brought me somewhat close to the KM and its leaders, and to the ND mass movement as a whole. In the ensuing period, people from the movement became close to me, or tried to be close to me and to other "progressives" in the NPC.
"I was initially impressed by the program of the ND movement. At the outset of the FQS, my sympathies were for the movement. It was in my desire to help the ND movement (and even the Lavaites) to get close to the mass media that I opened the door of the NPC to their leaders and spokespersons. My principal interest was to facilitate and promote good relations between the NPC and the movement, and to help get the movement sufficient space and time (in the case of radio or TV) in the mass media.
"I joined the discussion group (DG) in the mass media headed by Ka Satur (Ocampo). MY systematic learning of the ND movement and its principles moved me closer to it. I was no longer just a disinterested bystander.
"In May 1970, I ran for re-election as NPC president. Charlie del Rosario (then secretary-general of the KM, who disappeared and was presumed abducted and slain by the military in 1971) and a group of ND activists at the NPC's Plaridel Hall chanted slogans in support of our ticket. At the third floor the Lavaites distributed my handbills. At the NPC National convention preceding the election, we got the convention to approve a resolution aligning the NPC to the development for change.
"My participation in the ND movement increased. I became an actual participant, joining one gathering or march as my work in the NPC and the Bulletin Today staff allowed it. Upon the death of our friend and comrade Ka amado V. Hernandez, I became chairman of the amado V. Hernandez Memorial Foundation, which our group with Ka Satur set up. With Tony Tagamolia, who was then the editor-in-chief of the UP Collegian and president of the revitalized College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), we republished Jose Ma. Sison's book, "Struggle for National Democracy."
"I was soon invited to speak at ND public gatherings, including on or two occasions in Plaza Miranda. Ka Satur was the work horse, but I assisted in putting out Tingga, our small paper for mass media people.
"When the Preparatory Commission of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) was set-up in 1971, I was invited to become a members.
"When my second term was about to end in May 1971, our mass media group moved to ensure that the next NPC president could not be a lackey of Malacanang.
"I went underground on the night when martial law went into effect on
There are a number of points I can add to what Tony Zumel wrote about those days of NPC militancy.
What our media group did, besides conducting political discussions and studies among selected journalists with progressive bents, was try to raise the level of unity and militancy of media workers so that they could better struggle and win more benefits from managements. We try to achieve that through direct organizational work among the unions and through the publication and distribution among the unionists of Tingga.
One of our indefatigable colleagues was Henry Romero, a reporter of Taliba and later of the Bulletin, who "disappeared" during the early period of marital rule.
Before he declared martial law, Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus on
The NPC became the seat of the MCCCL secretariat, with then NPC president Amando Doronilla as secretary-general. Manila Times publisher Joaquin "
Marcos lifted the writ suspension in February 1972.
About what Tony Zumel wrote - that our media group ensured those who succeeded him as NPC presidents could not be lackeys of Malacanang - was fulfilled.
Amando Doronilla became an activist NPC president, and his successor Eddie Monteclaro also stood up for Marcos. After Marcos declared martial law and the military detained several journalist, including Chino Roces, Eddie Monteclaro, aided by then practicing lawyer, now Senator Joker P. Arroyo,
filed a petition for habeas corpus for the release of the detained journalists. It took some time, however, before Marcos set them free.
Even as Tony Zumel, Bobbie Malay, Henry Romero and I carried on the struggle in the underground revolutionary movement, other journalists influenced by the ND movement persisted with the anti-dictatorship struggle within the Philippine media. After the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in 1983, militancy in the press gained momentum.
By 1984, when the leadership of the NPC had gone back to the militants, the club, with Tony Nieva as president celebrated the first Press Freedom Day under martial law, on August 31, Del Pilar's birthday. As a political prisoner at the time writing a column Jose Burgos' pioneering We Forum, I was allowed a day's pass by then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile to address the celebration as key note speaker. Reporting on the event Malaya said in part; "If a journalist like Ocampo could still be incarcerated at a time when his colleagues are celebrating press freedom day, then, when is the local press be truly free? Ocampo gave the answer at the Plaridel Hall. "He said that the press will only be free if the people whom he serves shall be free."
That event paved the way for the fight to freedom, after more than nine years of military detention, on
The Club's reason for being
insidetheclub
The Club's reason for being
by Manuel Almario
On October 22, 2002, the National Press Club of the Philippine, Inc. (NPC) observed its 50th anniversary. As required by the corporation law, the NPC must renew its character to prolong its existence for another 50 years.
The observance of the 50th anniversary of the filing of the club’s Articles of Incorporation should provide us an occasion to review how the organization has discharged its mandate over the past 50 years. Have we been faithful to the objectives and purposes for which the organization has been formed?
We ask this question because many members tend to forget the professional objectives of the club, viewing it simply as a social organization.
Article 1 of the NPC charter sets forth “purposes” of the organization. The first paragraph states that “the purpose for which said corporation is formed is to promote cooperation and understanding among newspapermen and newspaperwomen and to draft a code of ethics for the advancement of the newspaper profession.”
The charter of the NPC thus provides that the organization is both a social club and a professional organization. While the first part of this paragraph states that the purpose of the corporation is “to promote cooperation an understanding” among its members, it also provides that it shall draft a “code of ethics.”
It was only in 1988 that the National Press Club in its annual convention formally approved a Code of Ethics. This established the NPC as a professional organization with a self-regulating mechanism that enforces lofty standards of journalism. Its by-laws mete out sanctions to NPC members who violate the organization’s Code of Ethics. The adoption of the Code of Ethics placed the NPC on the same level as the legal, medical and other traditional professions with their respective codes of ethics and high standards of practice.
The public purpose of NPC clearly stated in the second paragraph, namely, “to uphold the freedom of the press and the dignity of the newspapermen’s profession.”
(In 1952, when the Articles of Incorporation was drafted, broadcast journalism was still in infancy. Print media dominated the field. Radio, already well established, was still primarily a medium of entertainment and commentary. Television was just emerging, chiefly as entertainment medium. So the NPC membership at that time was composed mainly of “newspapermen” and “newspaperwomen.” Now that broadcast journalism is fully developed, the NPC has accepted broadcast journalist as members. NPC members are therefore referred to in our by-laws as journalists,” both broadcast and print. Pretty soon, internet journalists may be recognized as a part of the mainstream profession of journalism.
The defense of press freedom is therefore a main objective of the NPC. It is a public purpose because freedom of the press is not just a right of media practitioners, it is also a right of all people in a democratic society. It is an integral part of the freedom of expression guaranteed to the people by the Philippine Constitution. This is one reason why the NPC is more than just a social club, as some of our members tend to think, but a professional association as well.
Webster’s International Dictionary defines a profession as: “A calling requiring a specialized knowledge and often too long and intensive preparation including instructions in skills and methods… maintaining by force of organization or concerted opinion high standards of achievement and conduct, and committing its members to continued study and to a kind of work which has its prime purpose the rendering of a public service.”
The other part of paragraph 2 of article 1 declares that another purpose of NPC is to “uphold the dignity f the newspapermen’s profession.” This means that, aside from requiring its members to adhere to the Code of Ethics and to maintain respectable personal behavior, the NPC must also show concern for the working and living conditions of the journalists, consistent with their dignity as individuals and as leading members of the society. In short, the NPC cannot just close their eyes to the economic exploitation of journalists but must strive for better working conditions and acceptable standards of compensation for Filipino Journalists. Unless the working and living conditions of journalists ആരെ to a level commensurate with the dignity and intellectual requirements of their profession, their efforts to maintain high standards in the practice of their profession could suffer.
The public purpose of the National Press Club justified the congress of the Philippines in enacting Republic Act No. 905 in 1953, only a year after the formal organization of the NPC, donating to it a lot measuring 5,184.7 square meters, on which to construct its clubhouse. Under the Constitution of the Republic, the government cannot give donations to individuals or entities not imbued with a public purpose. But since the NPC is committed to defending the freedom of expression, a basic human right, and to upholding high standards in journalism, a profession imbued with public interest, then the Congress felt justified in providing a subsidy to the club in the form of a land donation. The donation, however, is not absolute because the land reverts to the ownership of the national government upon dissolution of the club.
The charter authorizes the NPC to “raise funds for the establishment of a non-profit facility for the recreation of the working newspapermen.” The founding fathers envisioned the club as providing services to its members, such as a library, recreational, social and professional facilities, and a restaurant that the journalists may patronize at relatively lower cost commensurate their incomes, considering that the club is non-profit and earns rentals from office space and income from fund-raising activities and other services to the public. In turn this would reinforce journalists against accepting favors from sources.
Unfortunately, journalists are notoriously incompetent business people. Thus the club is burdened with debts, to the extent that a government financial institution “title” over its properties (the NPC clubhouse proper and another building previously leased to the PLDT, as well as the land itself) after the NPC failed to pay its loans and real estate taxes. The club has also failed to keep up with the expectations of the membership they have provided with facilities for recreation and services that promote professional excellence. Many bona fide journalists have in fact distanced themselves from club affairs, promoting the club leadership to undertake campaigns to “bring back” members to the club.
The NPC, however, has been militant in defending the freedom of the press, except for occasional lapses. In cooperation with other media organizations, such as the Philippine Press Institute, Kapisnan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the NPC has been vigilant in denouncing threats to press freedom and in opposing any move from any quarter, including the government, to limit the freedom of speech and of the press.
In the 50’s, the NPC played a significant role in bolstering press freedom. This development occurred following the incarceration of five newspapermen for refusing to reveal the sources of their information in connection with the trial in Pasay City of the famous Monroy case involving the bribery of a murder witness in which a cabinet official was the principal accused. As a result, the NPC mounted a campaign that resulted in the amendment of Republic Act No. 63, which protected a journalist from revealing the source of his information unless required by the “interest of the state.” The amendment, under R.A. 1477, broadened the rights of journalists by changing the phrase “Interest of state” to “security of the state.” The “security” of the state is of narrower connotation than the “interest” of the state, so that a journalist cannot be forced to reveal the source unless it involves the national security.
Following the declaration of martial law in 1972, the National Press Club, under the presidency of Eddie Monteclaro of the Manila Times, fielded a petition for habeas corpus with the Supreme Court on behalf of the journalists arrested by the martial law government of President Marcos.
The petition challenges the constitutionality of martial law and questioned the act of the government in arresting and detaining journalists who merely exercised their right reporting on public events and in criticizing the acts of public officials. Joker arroyo, now a senator, as counsel for the NPC, together with then constitutional convention delegate Aquilino Pimintel jr., also now a senator, argued on behalf of the detained journalists.
In months of activism and protests against the Marcos government’s perceived efforts to curtail civil liberties and restrict press freedom, the NPC allowed its social hall, aptly named after the hero Marcelo H. Del Pilar, to be used by activists and the protestors for their meetings, and as a refuge from pursuing troopers and policemen. During martial law, protesters against the dictatorship were also allowed to make use of the facility to voice their protests. Conventions of the NPC were utilized to air demands for press freedom. The alternative press contributed to the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, and the NPC was not a mere bystander in the struggle for the return of civil liberties.
After the fall of the dictatorship, the NPC has continued to be vigilant in defending press freedom as mandated by its charter. It denounced threats to press freedom, including the murder of, physical assaults on and threats to individual journalists, as well as acts of harassments, legal or otherwise, of media institutions, like newspapers and broadcast stations.
The NPC sometimes had gone beyond mere defense of press freedom but had moved further to defend civil liberties, realizing that freedom of expression alone is futile unless civil liberties for the entire societies are likewise protected.
So the NPC, despite some inconsistency and some notable weaknesses and lapses, has striven to pursue its objectives and discharge its obligations to the Filipino public as stated in its character. Nevertheless, there is need to strengthen the professional character of the organization. The concentration of some NPC administrators on mere social and fund-raising activities might at times be beneficial and necessary, but these are merely supportive of our greater purpose that is public good, as spelled out in our character and purpose of the organization, the NPC will become irrelevant, especially since mismanagement of the club’s financial affairs and disregard of members’ welfare, is turning away working professional journalists from the club.
So let’s lay the foundation for a more professional, militant and purposeful NPC in the next fifty years as our legacy to future generations of Filipino journalists ant to our country as well. ###
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