By Joann Villanueva/PNA
BANGKOK, Thailand — Gains on the program to protect Filipino media practitioners will continue especially now that the Philippines has been removed from the top 5 deadliest countries in the world for journalists.
During the launch of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Press Freedom Caravan at The Cent Co-Working Space here, Undersecretary Joel Egco of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) said they have, so far, received around 50 complaints of various crimes against journalists.
These include cases of murder, frustrated murder, harassment and theft.
Egco said they have acted on all reports but upon investigation, only a few are work-related. For murder cases, he said only three of the 19 reports are related to the journalists’ job
“Not all are work-related, most are personal in nature,” he said, noting that they expect to get convictions as early as the first quarter of this year.
Since giving the media practitioners’ welfare greater focus in 2016, Egco said the Committee to Protect Journalists in October 2018 included the Philippines in its Global Impunity Index as one of those with the most improved status.
“That means something to us. That means we’re on the right track and we’re going to do what we’ve started and continue to do what we’ve been doing for the past two years,” he said.
The PCOO official said PTFoMs is “very pro-active” as compared to those established in the past since they have set a 10-minute window time to act on the complaints they receive through the short messaging system or calls.
