That we are doing this ceremony in my home city is a bonus not only for me as your inducting officer but also for your trustee for Mindanao, Allan Mediante, editor-in-chief of the Mindanao Gold Star Daily, one of the most committed newsmen to the universal democratic principle of the freedom of the press in this city.

Incidentally, Cagayan de Oro has a vibrant press that is kept alive by a vigorous press club. The people of the city are proud of its lively press. We are especially pleased that even during the dark days of martial law, by Executive Order No. 241 we set aside a week to celebrate Press Freedom in the city in 1982 and the Cagayan de Oro Press Club has without let up held the celebration every year thereafter up to the present.

There is no question that sometimes, the press in the city and that includes radio and television journalists go overboard in their reportage.

I know that from first hand experience having held government posts local and national as well. Nonetheless, it is my position that a country is better off having an abusive press than no press at all. Of course, the ideal is that the press should not only be free but also responsible.

In any event, what is important, I think, is to remember that while the press has the right to criticize people in or out of the government, the people it criticizes also have the right not only to explain their side but to criticize the critical press in the same measure.

Let me say at this point that your organization, the PPI, has done our country proud. You have time and again stood up for the right of journalists, the members of the press, to speak out their minds, to publish their ideas and be responsible for their views.

Shortly before the imposition of martial law in the country, the PPI took up the cudgels in 1970 for the brothers Rizal and Quintin Yuyitung of the China Commercial News that was published in Manila. The brothers Yuyitung had run afoul with the government for running certain articles that were deemed ‘communist propaganda" by the Marcos government.

Playing up to the Taiwan anti – communist government, Marcos ordered the immigration authorities to arrest and have them deported to Taiwan. The PPI through Max Soliven and Johnny Mercado stood up for the Yuyitungs and defended their right to say their piece. Not that its stand dissuaded the government to deport the Yuyitungs to Taiwan. Nonetheless, what is important is that even at the time, the PPI true to its mission told the government it was wrong to deport the Yuyitungs because they were merely exercising the freedom of the press.

More recently, the PPI again proved its mettle by publicly denouncing Presidential Proclamation 1017 as an immediate threat to press freedom in the country. In fact, one newspaper, the Daily Tribune, was raided by elements of the armed forces and threatened with permanent closure.

The PPI — under the leadership of Jake Macasaet of Malaya — came out with a blistering pooled editorial reproving the government for curtailing press freedom and for using martial law tactics to do so without the formality of declaring martial law.

Even for these two acts of courage alone, the PPI deserves the appreciation of our people.

I know how difficult it is for people in the media to stand up to government abuses, especially in a third world country like ours where the padrino system prevails over the normal norms of right and wrong. As news people, you have to be careful that advertisements, a major source of revenues that keep your media outlets running, are not cut off on pressure of the powerful.

And yet in the two examples cited, the PPI chose right over what is convenient to uphold press freedom even in defiance of the wishes of the government.

More positively, the PPI enhances the freedom of the press by compelling the members of the press to adhere to a code of ethics that would earn for them the trust and confidence of the public. Moreover, the PPI, I am told has been conducting seminars to improve the newsgathering and newsreporting skills of its members.

I would suggest, however, that new threats to press freedom are again knocking at our gates. Thus, the struggle to prevent an erosion of that freedom is far from over. The government will continue its attempts to muzzle the press in the country. And one of the convenient tools to do that would be through the enactment of the so – called antiterrorist act. This is not to say that the Act is not needed. We need legislation to combat the sophisticated methods that terrorists employ to harm the innocent. But everyone, especially the members of the media are called upon to help see to it that the law on terrorism that comes out of Congress must not infringe upon our basic freedoms in the name of the fight against terrorism.

The proposed law is now being debated in the halls of the Senate. I suggest that it is important for the PPI and for all other mass media organizations and concerned citizen groups to monitor the shape and form that this legislation will take.

Your views are especially welcome on the provisions on arrests without warrants, surreptitious wire tapping, scrutinizing your emails and other private communications, and probably even your bank accounts by government agents.

One final point. The press in the US today is being pressured by the government not to publish its plans dealing with terrorism. From the surface, the intent appears justifiable.

This renewed attempt to restrain the press was triggered by a New York Times disclosure on June 22 that the Swift banking consortium in Belgium was being used as a conduit for terrorist funds.

In a letter to the public, the editor of the New York Times has said that he did not find it compelling in the name of the public interest to refrain from doing what the government agents have suggested. The NY Times stand was shared by the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

The jury is still out on who is right and who is wrong on the issue of media self – censorship especially on issues of security. Katherine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, has admitted that there are indeed times when the right to publish must give way to the need to maintain state secrets.

Graham had "backed her editors through tense battles during the Watergate era." But in a 1986 speech, she warned that the media sometimes made ‘tragic mistakes’. She cited as an example the publication that the US had broken the "coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped and five months later they struck again, destroying the Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 American" troops.

Ben Bradlee, a former editor of the Post, however says in his book, A Good Life that "Officials often - more often than not, in my experience - use the claim of national security as a smoke screen to cover up their own embarrassment."

Other famous cases that impacted on press freedom -national security issues involved the naming in 1985 by the Washington Post of Col. Oliver North as the overseer of the secret war against the Nicaraguan rebels. And more than two decades earlier, the New York Times learned of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba but removed references to the CIA and other details upon the request of the government. But when the invasion proved to be a disaster, Pres. John F. Kennedy told a Times editor that he wished the paper had ignored the government plea - because a more pointed article might have led the CIA to abort the operation.

The difficulties that the US press has experienced in the matter of publishing what the government had at various times considered to be sensitive security information are pressing on our shores.

In fact, our press already had a foretaste of what is to come when there was a news blackout over the operation of our soldiers against the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and Sulu a year or two ago.

Perhaps, it would do the PPI well to put their collective heads together and map out suggestions on how the press will handle matters involving issues on terrorism under present laws and the rights of our people under the projected anti – terrorism legislation.

Today press freedom is being subjected to assault by powerful elements in the country. Press people are being eliminated as "enemies of the state" – as of last count, some 48 media people have been killed since the start of the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The PPI should perhaps assume a more assertive role to protect press freedom in general and the press practitioners in particular from harassment by the well – connected.

Despite the attempts of powerful elements to silence our media people by the use of the gun, I still believe that the pen is mightier than the sword. And for as long as we have journalists in the mold of the present trustees of the PPI, the truth that comes out in the written and oral reports of the country’s journalists will in the end prove stronger than the power that emanates from the barrel of a gun.