Dying for the Story

“It's a commentary show, I give comment," Jonathan Cabrera told me about his show The Informer, "If I find people are abusing their power, I give comment. It doesn’t matter who you are."

The risk, Cabrera said over coffee and cigarettes, is that people might kill you.

According to Reporters Sans Frontieres, in 2006, the Philippines had the second highest rate of journalist killings after Iraq.

“Every day you have to tackle different issues. You cannot evade,” Cabrera said. “If you hit the father, the brother, the wife someone will get angry at you. They might stab you. We are expecting that to happen.”

A fellow journalist was ambushed recently. Cabrera himself has received three death threats in as many months on the air. But he doesn’t shrink away from his responsibility to his listeners. His personal cell number is public, and he reiterates it everyday on his show.

He is a member of the Aklan United Media Association which was started in 2005. “We always campaign to please stop media killings. That's not the kind of medal we want.”

“You can't stop the media from exposing corruption,” he said, growing more animated. “Even if one person is angry at me, I have 100 people who are happy because everyday they are so frustrated that they want to shout, We want justice!”

“If you kill me, you put my head in Lizon,” he said, gesturing north, “and my hands in Mindenao,” gesturing south. “If you kill me, another Jonathan Cabrera – many more! - will be born again!”

He laughed, took a drag and looked at me for a moment.

“That's how I put it to the listeners. It sounds funny when I say it like that, but it's very serious.”

"I put it that way because my audience is the tricycle driver, the vendor of eggs. These are people with a lot of things to say, but no outlet," Cabrera, "Rich people have an outlet. They have access to the government. They know how to write."