News Analysis: Media killings affirm Philippines' record as dangerous place for journalists

The recent spate of killings of media practitioners in the Philippines has validated the findings of an international media watchdog that the country is the third most dangerous place for journalists to practice their profession.

The latest media victim was identified by the police as radio commentator Cosme Maestrado, 46, who was shot dead on Aug. 27 in Ozamiz City in southern Philippines.

On Aug. 19, radio reporter Teodoro Escanilla, 57, was also shot inside his home in a rural town in the province of Sorsogon, south of Manila.

A day earlier, newspaper reporter Gregory Ybanez, 67, was gunned down in front of his house in Tagum City, also in southern Philippines.

The successive media killings have prompted media organizations to call on the government of President Benigno Aquino III to immediately resolve the murder of journalists.

"Until Aquino demonstrates that his government is serious about ending the onslaught, the killings will inevitably continue," said Shawn Crispin, senior Southeast Asia representative of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The latest killings bring to 29 the number of journalists murdered since Aquino assumed office in 2010, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).

The NUJP said that the Aquino government has failed to stop the killing of journalists.

But Presidential Spokesman Herminio Coloma said that the government "is taking necessary action to identify and arrest suspects and bring them before the bar of justice."

According to the 2014 Impunity Index of the CPJ, the continued killing of journalists in the Philippines has pinned the country to the third place ranking behind Iraq and Somalia, a ranking that it has held for four years.

The Philippines retained its ranking despite last year's conviction of a gunman who shot broadcast investigative journalist Gerardo Ortega in 2011, which the Impunity Index itself described "a welcome development."

The Impunity Index noted that there were 51 unsolved murders of journalists in the Philippines from 2004 to 2013, giving the country a rating of 0.527 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants.

The country has held the third worst spot in the Index in 2010 after the Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, in which 58 people, including 34 journalists and media workers, were killed in the worst election-related incident in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province, in southern Philippines.

Whether by coincidence or not, on Aug. 27, when radio commentator Maestrado was gunned down, Supreme Court Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno announced that the protracted trial of the suspects in the Maguindanao massacre would wind up by the end of the year.

In one of her rare press briefings, Sereno said that prosecution and defense lawyers will finish presenting evidence by the end of 2015, after which the judge has 90 days to issue a verdict.

"It is excruciatingly slow for the victims' families. That is not debatable, it is painful, there must be closure," Sereno said.

The trial, which spanned almost six years, involves members of the influential Ampatuan clan who allegedly ordered the massacre in their attempt to crush a rival clan's election challenge.

The slow pace of the trial has angered the families of the victims and frustrated President Aquino who has promised a verdict before he steps down from office in mid-2016.

One of the principal accused, the patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., died of liver cancer in July while under hospital guard.

Two sons of Andal Ampatuan, Sr. Andal Jr and Zaldy are among 100 people on trial for one of the world's most shocking mass murders.

The CPJ has described the Maguindanao massacre as the single deadliest incident for journalists in journalism history throughout world. Endi