"Attacks on press freedom often go hand in hand with attacks on all other freedoms and rights. This is especially true in the countryside where media, however flawed, is seen as the chief protector of the "little people", National Union of Journalists of the Philippines President Inday Espina-Varona said. "In the countryside, radio is as strong as the rule of law is weak", she added. This was the tone of the discussion of the roundtable on "Media's Role in Reporting Human Rights" organised by the the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in collaboration with Philippine media development and support organizations launched the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project, last 18 January 2008. This meeting launches IWPR's project aimed at providing training on human rights issues for national journalists

The panel unanimously declared that it is necessary to ensure an environment where journalists are able to do their work right in order to defend human rights and democracy, but they also insist that journalists have to be above all aware of the notion of human rights.

Human Rights in a broader view

Too often, the notion of human rights is presented (understood) as a narrow concept limited to political and civil rights. But it also includes economic, social and cultural rights. Concretely, this means that fair trade, work, just compensation, gender equality, social security (the right to food and the right to shelter), to name a few,  should not be presented by the media as some kind of issues being discussed, but as self-evident civilian liberties which are not negotiable. Alan Davis, initiator of the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project insisted heavily on the fact that Human Rights should be seen as a universal issue and not as leftist or activist propaganda. Therefore these rights should be respected by all of us, by the population and by the government.

The discussion ended with the intervention of Edita Burgos, mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, showing the misfunctioning of Philippine media. Her son's name headed the newspapers for several weeks, but that stopped eight months ago. During that time she had been directly confronted with media's mishandling: accusations, misusing of words, non contextualization, and ignorance. Edita Burgos concluded with: "Extra judicial killing will always be wrong. There is only the right to report as far as we know and not to decide what is right or what is wrong. We are on the side of the truth and not of a party-politician." "Responsibility which relies on a journalist is really important!" she added. Ms. Burgos has been without news of her son for eight months. Since then he has been forgotten by the media.

Sources:

http://www.rightsreporting.net