Malaya chief of reporters and columnist Ellen Tordesillas compared the police arrest of journalists at the Peninsula Manila with the Holocaust:

At that point, it made me remember from Holocaust movies, where Jews are being lined up in concentration camps

Tordesillas was among the resource persons in today’s Senate hearing attended by some of the best journalists but snubbed by President Arroyo’s officials who are by now experts of skirting public accountability. (Arroyo officials only attend congressional hearings when they ask for money.)

Also take note that the jeepney strike did not prevent these Arroyo officials from coming.

I am happy to be in the company of these feisty journalists who saw and resisted and exposed the depraved repression of press freedom.

Maria Ressa of ABS-CBN said:

Every journalist reporting on a conflict situation now have to worry if they could be arrested or charged. Journalists can be charged so can the news organization they work for. This is no longer a threat but a reality and creates a chilling effect for working journalists

Ressa sees an omen in what the police did to journalists:

A more dangerous time ahead

Tony Lopez had this to say:

I don’t know why the arrests were made when no martial law has been declared. We have seen 15 coup attempts — small, medium, large, real and imaginary…but no journalists were arrested

Read the Inquirer report on the hearing here and Ressa’s remarks here.

Elsewhere, the PNP wants to impose “press coverage protocols” or whatever that means, and the Palace agrees.

Imposing “limits” or “boundaries” on coverage by journalists is very dangerous to press freedom and civil liberties. Journalists will have to think twice whether to cover some event, lest he or she be charged criminally by the government. The government has no business determining what journalists should cover, in the first place.

There is a view that the press (or media) is the Fourth Estate and is said to be the people’s best ally in feretting out the truth on what the government is doing or not doing. A controlled or manipulated press does a disservice to the people because the information it provides is compromised from the very start, if there will be “protocols” on coverage of media.

If Joseph Estrada tried an advertising boycott to hurt the Inquirer, Mrs. Arroyo’s government is waging war on the entire media and I hope journalists see this in the arrests and the protocol issue.

My personal view is that journalists today should come together and study the matter more deeply and assess the impact of the arrests at the Pen, and the proposed protocol. The profession’s integrity is at stake, and we cannot discount the ill effects of these matters to the people’s right to know.

(TV grab courtesy of ABS-CBNnews.com)