At the core of Amaranth is our oath to be the students’ conscientious voice—their eyes, ears, and conscience. We know this to be true for most of the student publications as well. However, for a student publication to truly be the voice for the voiceless, as we all purportedly claim to be, we must first be radical.
To write is to declare a position. As members of the press, our pieces should inform and call for definite socio-political changes. We cannot do this without challenging the status quo. And in doing so, we find ourselves confronting the evils that render people wounded and blind to our existing realities. Radicalism as a media person, therefore, is experiencing reality and reporting it as it is.
Come university life, the crossroads of different walks of life, and the awakening of our social participation. This is where student journalists leave the premise of high school press conferences built upon the culture of competition. College campus papers are built and run differently. Here, press freedom is even more the wellspring of our duty, and independence is the bastion of our function. We have come to the realization that we are the masses. Their struggles are our struggles.
As bearers of the pen, our duty is to inform and be informed by the truth. Yet, in our pursuit of such, we face relentless repression. But the struggles of the student press are far from isolated; they represent a microcosm of the battle for free expression and truth in an increasingly hostile world.
Marcos dictatorship
When dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in September of 1972, Liliosa Hilao began wearing black to mourn because, according to her, “democracy is dead.” She was right.
One of Marcos’ first orders was Letter of Instruction No. 1, an order to control all of the media. Those whose contents and articles were deemed critical and subversive to the government were struck down, denied due process, and ordered for closure.
Liliosa Hilao was the first one to resist. As an associate editor of the campus paper from the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM), Hilao has critiqued the government through her published essays, “The Vietnamization of the Philippines” and “Democracy is Dead in the Philippines under Martial Law.”
Just six months after the declaration of martial law, Hilao died in detention. Authorities declared her death a suicide by ingesting muriatic acid, but witnesses and family accounts found she was tortured and abused while in custody. Her case was closed, and there is still no justice for Hilao in the Philippine courts.
Liliosa Hilao’s death is the first case of death while in state custody during martial law. Her death marked the beginning of waves of attacks on the media and democracy as a whole.
Authoritarian Duterte
Inked in the set of fears of the presidents that followed is the fear of the truth. That is why the first waves of attacks on democracy involve stifling the media. And whatever attack the mainstream media receives is also an example of fear for the student press.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte explicitly hates the media. “Kill journalism. Stop journalism in this country,” he said in a press conference just a month before taking office on June 2, 2016. He did not bluff.
In his presidency, Duterte has managed to shift the narrative and declare the media liars. This shift was bolstered by utilizing social media and technology. Propaganda was run by trolls, accounts managed by paid individuals whose task is to tell the same narrative multiple times until it resembles the truth and becomes the new narrative. In his time, Duterte has challenged and closed down the media broadcasting giant ABS-CBN by revoking its franchise and placing other charges.
With the media under attack, the student press isn’t an exception. Redtagging—associating individuals deemed critical to the government, especially activists and human rights defenders, with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA)—became the norm.
Student Press: Holding the Line
Throughout the Duterte administration, campus and community journalists were among the hard-hit receivers of intensified redtagging. And it doesn’t come alone. With it came threats to life.
In 2017, Duterte’s Executive Order (EO) 70 provided for a “whole-of-nation” approach to defeating the local Communist terrorist groups, which led to the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). The government agency is notorious for its baseless and ungrounded publications of red-tagging across its platforms.
In 2018, Amaranth was the recipient of these attacks from trolls and members of the community alike after it declared its support for Rappler after the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) revoked its registration without due process. In an editorial published that same year, Amaranth points out the dangers the accusations and attacks have brought to its staff, some calling them a disgrace to the university and idiots, and some wishing them rape and death. Despite these, Amaranth believes that the SEC’s revocation of Rappler’s registration is an issue of press freedom and freedom of expression. In that same editorial, Amaranth boldly announced that it is not neutral and that its biases give it a principled stand. It is, perhaps, one of the very rare moments for a student publication outside liberal metropolises to voice such a strong rebuke to a sitting president. Rare because the student press on the outskirts are easy targets, and speaking up has its consequences.
In 2023, student journalists from The Democrat, an independent student paper from the University of Nueva Caceres in Naga City, participated in and reported at the 51st Commemoration of the Declaration of Martial Law. In their reportage and in practicing their democratic freedom, the paper’s editor-in-chief, Aila Joy Esperida, and head photojournalist, John Harvee Cabal, received letters of summons from their barangays under the pretense of a ‘talk’ with members of the Philippine Army without any context of the reason for the ‘invitation’. This act is a stark reminder of the dark days of martial law, where stifling dissent was commonplace.
As the mainstream media changes its business models to accommodate a capitalist world, the campus papers retain its traditional values. Around the world, only a few broadcasting giants report truthfully about the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And as students in major universities of the West set up campus camps to demand deviation of funds from funding the genocide in Gaza and justice for all, the first to report while joining the picket lines are the student press.
Repression within the Campus
But perhaps the most common weapon against the campus press is used by institutions that were supposedly their first line of defense—their respective universities. Since 2010, the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) has documented 1000 incidents of press repression across universities in the Philippines violating campus press freedom, including harassment, censorship, withholding of funds and resources, and red tagging.
In 2023, An Lantawan, the official tertiary publication of the Leyte Normal University, was denied recognition of their university and was required for the first time to be accredited, the same process interest-based and ordinary student organizations go through. The publication’s Facebook page, with over 40,000 followers, has been renamed the LNU Student Publication Office and was explicitly instructed not to use the name An Lantawan. With the absence of an appointed editorial board that year, their funds were withheld.
It seems that attacking the student press is an easier route than actually solving the problems reported.
Despite an existing law, the Campus Journalism Act of 1991, also known as Republic Act No. 7079, which provides for the promotion and protection of campus journalism, there are still cases not recorded or reported to journalism guilds in fear of more restrictions.
The law, which provides for unrestricted editorial policies determined by an independent editorial board, is still subject to interference by school administrations. In fact, even the century-old Philippine Collegian of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, has just experienced a hampered selection process for their next editor-in-chief in 2018. Two of its examinees were excluded from the editorial exam without prior notice under the pretense that their disqualifications were because they were graduating that year, which were then dismissed by the examinees as irrelevant as they were to take another program next semester.
The current law does not provide enough protection for student journalists. House Bill 1493 was lobbied since 2013 as the Campus Press Freedom Act by former Kabataan Party-List Representative Terry Ridon, providing for more protection and penalizing violations of campus press freedom. This bill is still pending in the lower house on its first reading.
Courage On
Stifling the media is the first act of tyrants, as it is in itself the embodiment of freedom of expression, a pillar of democracy. A free-thinking and informed citizenry is powerful and, therefore, a threat to those in power.
A campus journalist should dare to write stories that scare them. If it doesn’t scare, it must at least inspire. For even if a paper is operating in the backdoors and alleyways of dilapidated buildings, a principled stand is what it merits. Silence is for libraries where knowledge is relearned, but our silence would be complicity in the wisdom unlearned.
Being radical as a journalist, in its purest form, should be writing and creating fearlessly and responsibly to effect change. Radical thinking in the student press is a necessity. When we write for the truth, we mean we are writing it for you.
At present, where we live witnessing the decline of democracies and journalists killed for the most basic right of free speech– we need a more radical student press– unafraid, unhampered, unencumbered, relentless, responsible, and more determined.
The student press are easy targets of censorship, threats, harassments, and being silenced. We have so much to lose, which is also why we have so much to fight for.