IF ANDAL AMPATUAN SR. and his sons ruled Maguindanao as if they owned the province, perhaps it was because they really owned a sizeable chunk of it – and parts of Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Davao City, and Makati City as well. Andal Sr. and his sons...

ON FRIDAY, November 23, the nation marks the third anniversary of the Maguindanao Massacre, the worst case of election-related violence in Philippine history, and, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the single deadliest event for...

AT LEAST a hundred cases related to impunity against the exercise of freedom of expression have been recorded in Southeast Asia for 2012, according to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), a regional press freedom watchdog and network of...

“REGARDLESS OF FRONTIER.” The omission of this international human rights standard for the protection of freedom of opinion and expression in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) that leaders of the 10 member-states unveiled on Sunday has...

FILIPINO JOURNALISTS would not have to worry about the Right of Reply bill pending in Congress if they practice fair and balanced reporting in the first place, says President Benigno S. Aquino III. The President made the remark in the sidelines of a...

A crime against the people by the House of Representatives - and by President Benigno S. Aquino III and the ruling Liberal Party. This was how the Philippine Daily Inquirer described Monday's aborted hearing on the FOI bill by the House Committee on...

FIREWORKS erupted during Tuesday's House Committee on Public Information hearing on the long-delayed Freedom of Information (FOI) bill. But when the smoke cleared, FOI advocates realized that the lone victim that lay dead on the floor was, again,...