In commemoration of the First Quarter Storm’s 50th anniversary and UP Journalism Club’s 65th anniversary, we would like to honor UPJC’s alumni who fought for democratic rights and press freedom during Martial Law.
“We were never for an authoritarian form of government, we were against Marcos, the military, and the government.”
Marites Vitug
Editor-at-large, Rappler
Q: What was it like in UP during Martial Law?
MARITES VITUG: I entered UP in 1971, just after the First Quarter Storm. Martial law was declared a year later: On that day in September 1972, I remember being part of an anti-Marcos street protest on campus when student leaders announced on megaphones that we had to disperse because martial law had just been declared. My group and I scurried to our dormitories (Kamia for me and Sampaguita for the others). In the dorm, we were told not to leave for fear that if we did, the military or police would arrest us. That was a long, scary night.
The UP Student Council was dismantled and replaced by a Consultative Committee on Student Affairs or Concomsa (hope my memory is right). I was voted by my sector (dormitories) to represent them in Concomsa. I was then active in communicating dorm residents’ complaints and feedback to the authorities. As a whole, Concomsa aired student grievances to the UP leadership and took positions on national issues as well.
Q: During your time, how did you and fellow members/colleagues of UP Journalism Club oppose Martial Law?
MARITES VITUG: I have vague memories now of our activities at the UP Journ Club. But one thing remains clear: we were never for an authoritarian form of government, we were against Marcos, the military, and the government. We talked about national issues, how these affected us in UP—either in fora or just among ourselves. The Journ Club was a safety valve for us, a place where we were free to speak up.
My opposition to martial law became sharper when I was a journalist in the declining years of Marcos (1983-1986). During this period, I reported for Business Day on the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., the tumultuous protest movement, the above-ground (political parties and parliament of the streets) and underground opposition (NPA, CPP-NDF, MNLF, military rebels). I tested the limits of journalism—because there was state censorship at the time—and contributed to making the citizenry informed. Fortunately, Business Day was an independent media organization that practiced true journalism despite the dictatorship.
Marites Dañguilan Vitug has been a journalist for more than three decades and is one of the Philippines’ most accomplished journalists. She is also a bestselling author. Marites has written eight books on Philippine current affairs. She is the former editor of Newsbreak, a pioneering political magazine. Currently, she is editor-at-large of Rappler.com.
Her latest book, the story of the Philippine arbitration case versus China on the maritime dispute over parts of the South China Sea, was published by the Ateneo University Press in July 2018 and won the National Book Award.
Her other books include:
- Endless Journey, a memoir of former national security adviser, Jose Almonte;
- Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, the first to lift the veil of the Supreme Court;
- Hour Before Dawn: The Fall and Uncertain Rise of the Philippine Supreme Court, a sequel to Shadow of Doubt;
- Our Rights, Our Victories: Landmark Cases in the Supreme Court (with Criselda Yabes);
- Power from the Forest: the Politics of Logging;
- Jalan-Jalan: A Journey through EAGA (with Criselda Yabes, 1998), and
- Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao (with Glenda M. Gloria, 2000).
Marites’s works have been published in a number of periodicals including the Nikkei Asia Review, Nieman Reports, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Newsweek and Asahi Shimbun, and books and journals, including The Politics of Environment in Southeast Asia (Routledge: London and New York) and The Journal of Environment and Development (University of California in San Diego).
She graduated from the University of the Philippines (AB Broadcast Communication) in 1975. In 1986, she was the first Filipino to be a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University after the Marcos years. Marites pursued her Diploma in World Studies at the London School of Economics (1988-1989).
“In this current age of disinformation, truth-telling and accuracy is fundamental in reviving a counterculture that provides information for Filipinos to understand Philippine society and its problems.”
Luis V. Teodoro
Professorial Lecturer, UP Journalism Department
Columnist, BusinessWorld
Q: What was it like in UP during your time?
LUIS TEODORO: The issues of our time, prior to the declaration of martial law, were primarily on the causes of Philippine poverty and underdevelopment, which the burgeoning student movement identified as imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism. The call in UP as well as outside it was to put an end to all three, and to erect in their place an independent, self-reliant Philippines through national industrialization and an authentic agrarian reform program that would abolish the tenancy system which has been described as one of the worst in the world. But this can only be done if political power is democratized, meaning if the decades long monopoly over political power by a handful of families is dismantled, and the basic sectors of Philippine society—the workers and the farmers—are empowered.
To achieve this, what is needed, among others, is the making of a counterculture that would challenge the dominant culture that has mis-educated the Filipino people into hopelessness and the belief that poverty, injustice and all the ills of Philippine society are simply just the way things are, are the will of God, or simply impossible to address. Hence the need for demonstrations, rallies, teach-ins, publications, and other means of engagement in the cultural sphere, which the studentry are in the best position to lead. One of the most noticeable characteristics of the 1960s was the proliferation of publications as well as of flyers, declarations, manifestos that challenged the political, economic and ideological views dominant in the University as well as in the rest of society. Among those publications, in which JC alumni were active, were Progressive Review and Praxis. Of course, the Collegian was also among them.
Q: During your time, how did you and your fellow members or colleagues of UP Journalism Club oppose Martial Law?
LUIS TEODORO: Many alumni of the Journalism Club went underground to work in the clandestine publications that from the very beginning were engaged in educating the people about the realities of martial law. Others were also later involved in above ground publications such as Signs of the Times, Philippine News and Features, Malaya, We Forum, etc. Still others joined the New People’s Army as political and information officers.
Q: Given the lessons of the past, how can UP Journalism Club and the Filipino people fight against current press freedom issues?
LUIS TEODORO: In this current age of disinformation, truth-telling and accuracy is fundamental in reviving a counterculture that provides information for Filipinos to understand Philippine society and its problems.
Luis V. Teodoro is a retired journalism professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Mass Communication (UP-CMC), of which he served as dean for two terms (1994-2000). Prior to his deanship he was thrice chair of the UP-CMC Journalism Department.
He was vice chair of the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHED) Technical Panel on Communication and the Social Sciences, and chair of CHED’s Technical Committee on Journalism Education.
After retirement, he was a professorial lecturer at UP-CMC, where he taught a graduate course on the political economy of the mass media and contemporary issues in communication as well as undergraduate courses on mass media ethics.
It was during his deanship (1994-2000) that two departments of UP-CMC—the department of journalism and the department of communication research—were first named Commission on Higher Education Centers of Excellence.
He held a number of professorial chairs before his retirement from UP as a full professor of journalism.
He conceptualized and raised the initial funds for the construction of the College of Mass Communication Media Center, the cornerstone of which was laid during his deanship of the College.
A former editor of the Philippine Collegian and the UP Writers’ Club’s Literary Apprentice during his student days, he was elected to the international social science honor society of Phi Gamma Mu and the international honor society of Phi Kappa Phi upon graduation from UP in 1964.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (with a concentration in Journalism and Creative Writing), he attended the Master of Arts Program of the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Master of Arts in Asian Studies Program of the UP Asian Center.
He began his teaching career in UP as a member of the faculty of the then College of Liberal Arts’ Department of English and Comparative Literature, where he taught, among others, courses in Philippine literature in English and fiction writing.
He is also an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication of New Delhi, India, and was a research fellow at the Communication Institute of the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
He has published two books in the United States: Out of This Struggle: the Filipinos in Hawaii, published by the University Press of Hawaii, of which he was editor, and Two Perspectives on Philippine Literature and Society (with E. San Juan, Jr. and published by the University of Hawaii Center for Asian and Pacific Studies) He co-authored with Rosalinda Kabatay Mass Media Laws and Regulations in the Philippines, which was published by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore.
A former political prisoner, he was editor of the alternative news agency Philippine News and Features during the martial law period.
After the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, he wrote columns for several broadsheets including BusinessMirror, Manila Standard Today, Today, and The Manila Times. He was also editor and columnist of National Midweek magazine and wrote a weekly opinion piece for ABS-CBN News Online. He has been writing a column for BusinessWorld business newspaper since 2007.
A former member of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) board of editors, he is currently a trustee of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and national chair of the AlterMidya network of alternative media organizations.
He edited CMFR’s regional publication Journalism Asia, and its media-monitoring publication PJR Reports as well as the CMFR website, and writes a blog for the CMFR microsite In Medias Res. He was editor of the Philippine Journalism Review, a refereed journal for academics and senior journalists that CMFR briefly published. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG).
He has written and edited books on mass media, journalism, press freedom and free expression, among them: Mass Media Laws and Regulations in the Philippines (1998), which he co-wrote with Rosalinda Kabatay, and which was published by the Asian Media and Information Centre (AMIC) of Singapore, and Community Communication: An Introduction (1997); CMFR publications such as Media in Court (1997), Limited Protection: Press Freedom and Philippine Law (2006), The CMFR Ethics Manual: A Values Approach to News Media Ethics (2007), and the annual Philippine Press Freedom Report.
A collection of his essays on communication, journalism and the media, In Medias Res, was published by the UP Press in 2012, followed in 2014 by a collection of opinion pieces, Vantage Point: The Sixth Estate and Other Discoveries, which received the 2015 National Book Award for Journalism. A third book, Divide by Two, has also been published by the UP Press. He received the Titus Brandsma Award for Press Freedom in 2019.
He is also a fictionist. His collection of short stories, The Undiscovered Country, which includes Palanca Awards, Philippines Free Press and Carlos P. Romulo award-winning fiction, was published by the UP Press in 2006 as a UP centennial publication.
He has been a resource speaker on media ethics, problems of the Philippine press, journalism education, media literacy and other issues for various seminars and conferences in the Philippines, the United States, Germany, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as well as on such issues as the Right of Reply, Freedom of Information, Media Literacy, the Political Economy of the Mass Media, and Disinformation for Philippine newspapers, radio and television.
The contents of this post were retrieved from a Wayback Machine archive of UPJC’s old website on July 14, 2024, 07:29:45 GMT.
