FOR YEARS, the Philippine government has been saying it has been addressing the issue of media killings in the country by trying to go after the killers and the masterminds.
As early as 2006, the government created a special task force to identify and prosecute those involved in extrajudicial killings of activists, lawyers, and journalists.
Seven years later, Task Force Usig has made some gains in beefing up the investigative capabilities of the police force. The poor investigative capabilities of the police have been blamed for the culture of impunity that has encouraged more media killings, making the Philippines one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
However, much of the reforms that the Philippine National Police has been trumpeting are still to be felt on the ground, where ordinary policemen have to make do with inadequate skills, manpower, and equipment.
In this 12-minute video, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism looks into whether all these reforms have had an impact on the spate of media killings. To do this, the PCIJ looked at one particular media killing case, and investigated how the investigation has been done so far.
The findings have been far from encouraging.