My barong and skirt from graduation the previous day still littered the bedroom floor when I left home Monday morning, July 29. While driving along the Elliptical Road, I was mentally tying up the loose ends of a speech I will deliver before lawmakers to ask them to pass a law that will guarantee press freedom on campuses.
This was not how I imagined I would spend my first day out of journalism school. I, a 22-year-old introvert, was going to speak before lawmakers inside the halls of Batasang Pambansa, where President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his State of the Nation Address a week earlier.
But I must. I was 18 when I joined Tinig ng Plaridel, the official publication of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. My years in the student publication empowered me to channel my frustrations with problematic academic and national policies into fair and critical news outputs.
The Campus Press Freedom (CPF) bill is important for campus journalists to continue our reporting on important issues such as the failures of online learning during the pandemic, seek justice for the urban communities we live in that are constantly threatened by forced demolitions, and to protect the only remaining rainforest in Quezon City doomed of being eradicated.
Motivated not by corporate greed but by the genuine need to amplify the narratives that never reach TV airwaves and broadsheets, the campus press is in a position to critically assess relevant issues creeping within Philippine schools and the nation as a whole. The campus press that was once a force in contesting twisted narratives during martial law and restoring press freedom in the country in 1986.
Immense is the role of the campus press so much so that its protection is engraved in Philippine law.
Republic Act (RA) 7079 or the Campus Journalism Act (CJA) of 1991 upholds and protects the freedom of the campus press. It aims to promote the growth and development of campus press as a means of “developing moral character and personal discipline of the Filipino youth.”
CJA enumerates sources of funds that “may” sustain a student publication’s operations and prohibits school administrations from withholding these. It exempts grants and donations to student publications from taxation. This law also created the annual school press conferences, an arena for high school campus journalists to hone their journalistic skills.
But even with CJA’s provisions, why is the campus press hurting? CJA’s provisions are not enough.
There have been 206 cases of campus press freedom violations in the country, including censorship, withholding of funds and state surveillance, since 2023, according to the College Editors Guild of the Philippines.
I recall a student publication that was forced to solicit money because they couldn’t access their own funds amounting to almost P300,000. I remember my editor’s face bannered in a post that tagged her and many other student editors as terrorists and enemies of the state.
I relive my fear when my publication’s online page was bombarded with trolls’ ad hominem attacks, all because of my photo and video reports about students’ protest action when school administrators brazenly neglected their calls.
And then there are experiences that the numbers above simply do not capture.
In UP Diliman, out of at least 17 established student publications, 12 of them have already stopped producing stories. A number of them were never officially recognized by their college administrations, nor financially supported.
How exactly can the campus press fulfill their journalistic duties if they are underfunded, steeped in bureaucratic roadblocks and terrorized by attacks?
What becomes of their stories when cash-strapped student publications that can no longer muster courage to withstand their struggles are slowly waning into inactivity?
This is why it is urgent for Congress to pass the Campus Press Freedom in the remaining months of the 19th Congress.
First proposed by Kabataan Partylist in 2011, the measure calls for the mandatory collection of publication fees and establishment of student publications in basic and tertiary education institutions.
If passed, individuals who dare commit campus press violations, such as censorship and withholding of funds, would be penalized. Campus journalists on the receiving end of threats and violations would also be entitled to legal assistance from institutions such as the Commission on Higher Education, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and the Department of Education.
The CPF bill sets out clear and definitive mechanisms that the CJA failed to include.
Congress has only 10 months to pass this measure before another session begins. If our representatives are true to their mandate of empowering the Filipino youth, it should fall within their interests to fight for this 13-year-old bill and not let it slide into dormancy just like its older versions.
On the part of the campus press, the fervor to report on issues that hound the Filipino nation will never cease for as long as it exists. In the face of attacks, the duty to unite our pens – especially for campus press alumni like me – only grows mightier! — PCIJ.org