Phil Bronstein on the Journalist Victims of the Ampatuan Massacre

SPEECH OF PHIL BRONSTEIN (Executive Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle) AT THE 12/02/09 MEMORIAL MASS AT St. PATRICK’S CHURCH IN SF ON THE JOURNALIST VICTIMS OF THE AMPATUAN MASSACRE

We mourn all the victims of this profoundly obscene act of violence.

It is a great shame for a country whose reporters otherwise have distinguished themselves over many decades by their heroism and their dedication and devotion to their craft…which is to seek the truth and tell the facts.

But let us be clear and be sure: when you kill the messenger, it is because you yourself have no message of value.

And it is ultimately a futile act, as barbarous as it is, because no amount of killing journalists-and the Philippines has seen far more of those deaths than most countries over too many years, 134 since 1986-will ever silence the message.

I have seen in the Philippines in my own time the bullies, murderers, warlords, even straight-up politicians who simply have others do their dirty work in the dead of night, people who feel the rules don’t apply to them.

And it’s journalists like the ones we honor tonight, as much as or more than any other single group of people, who apply those rules often at their own peril.

We forget that here, in America, where seeking truth and publishing facts almost never lead to such brutality, or even to threats to people’s lives.

I had a few people threaten me when I was reporting in the Philippines, powerful people. So I felt briefly that discomforting and sometimes scary sense of mortality and vulnerability. But I could also leave any time I wanted to, and come home.

I also know that we talk a great deal about American journalists killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and other parts of the world that are at war…some of those journalists have been friends of mine over the years.

But no journalists are braver and none put their lives more at risk than those who are citizens of and report from their own countries in conflict.

Thirty journalists murdered in the Philippines is an unestimable loss.

But I know very well from my experience and observations over the years of friends and colleagues in the Filipino press corps that the work of these slain journalists, in fact all the work that is a vital part of the fabric of any democracy….that their work will be carried on.

Let us do everything and anything we can to press Philippine authorities for justice in this case, as a signal to bullies and murderers that they cannot snuff out lies and erase the truth with impunity.

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