BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – A radio commentator was shot dead Saturday night in Kalinga province, the first journalist killed in the five-day-old Aquino administration.
Jose Dagio, 75, was shot while having dinner in his home in Barangay Tuga in Tabuk town around 8 p.m., according to police reports.
Dagio was a reporter-commentator of Radyo Natin Tabuk and a part-time columnist of a community newspaper, the police said. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
The role of the International Federation of Journalists in the new world information order debate, 1972-1982
“As of now we are still facing a blank wall since according to the victim’s family, there are no known threats to his life," said police investigator Jose Candelario of Tabuk Police.
He said they are not discounting the possibility that the killing was work-related since Dagio was a veteran radio announcer.
Dagio was the first media fatality under the week-old administration of President Benigno Aquino III, who is being pressured by local and international media groups to put a stop on media killings and hasten the investigation of the more than 100 newsmen killed during the nine-year Arroyo administration.
International Federation of Free Journalists
According to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP), 139 media practitioners had been killed since Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, restored democracy in 1986 — 102 of these under the term of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The number includes the 32 journalists murdered in the infamous Nov. 23 massacre in Maguindanao province last year — a carnage blamed on the powerful Ampatuan political family.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has tagged the Philippines as the most dangerous place in the world for media workers. - KBK
