By Willie Jose
Working in a newspaper during those early years of martial law in the 70s was not so hard or fearsome; all the papers had to do was publish “positive stories” about the workings of government and the country —and follow Malacañang’s directives.
Those martial law years were the heyday for press releases, but some people called them “praise releases.” The various government agencies had regularly distributed these press releases to three existing newspapers at that time– The Daily Express, Manila Bulletin and the Times Journal.
However, reporters covering their beats found it easy to do their work since they mostly relied on these releases; it was the safest thing to do—to toe the government’s official line that everything was peaceful and beautiful.
In the waning days of the Marcos dictatorship, Neal Cruz and Pat Gonzales founded the Kapihan sa Manila Hotel, a media breakfast forum specifically aimed at testing the limits of press freedom at that time,
One day, I got assigned to cover the newly organized media forum. I enjoyed covering this forum because of the chance to interview various who’s who in society, be they pro-Marcos or in the opposition. Knowing that those interviews and stories did not get the chance to land in the news section of the paper, I had my own way of “banking” these, which I could write in the coming days of the week.
Since it was a breakfast forum, I would regularly have my early-morning breakfast, seeing Daily Express journalists Felix Mediavillo and Neal Cruz at the Manila Hotel. I would pay my bills in cash, and when I arrived at the office that day to type my stories, I would reimburse my expenses at the office cashier.
Imagine that I had gotten some good stories, plus the perk of free breakfast every Monday morning.
I remember the early days of our newspaper’s operation–The Times Journal– and we as employees, were very well cared for by the paper’s big boss, Gov. Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez, the brother-in-law of former President Marcos.
Our salaries were relatively good, plus we had our Christmas and anniversary bonuses; we could quickly get company loans for our children’s tuition, payable through salary deductions. We did our work well without worrying about living under martial law —right in the office, we never talked about it.
However, we knew how the paper operated during the initial years of martial law, with ubiquitous censors checking its content before publication. The editors themselves had to exercise self-censorship, fully knowing what they could publish under their care.
Eventually, these military censors were nowhere to be found because the editors became more adaptable; the unwritten rule at the time was that the paper could publish anything under the sun except negative stories about President Marcos and the First Family.
Since there were not enough political stories to publish, this situation gave rise to the birth of the “People’s Journal,” a tabloid sold at 15 Cents a copy. These tabloids were selling like hotcakes—and with some eye-catching headlines about “Don Pepe” and “Ben Tumbling,”. Publishing crime stories, sports news and showbiz was more acceptable and safer than writing about politics.
During the martial law years, there were some attempts to organize a union, but with the advent of the EDSA Revolution, we closed ranks once again and successfully formed a labour union.
And that was when the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) took over the PJI’s management—and the rest was history.
Willie Jose is a freelance journalist, and his past experience includes serving as a reporter for the Bluffs Monitor, a copy editor for the Times Journal, and, now, a columnist for Balita, a community newspaper in Toronto. He’s an alumnus of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. He has recently written a book—Iskolar ng Bayan—published by Amazon.
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