The nation celebrates Press Freedom Week this week with the twin terrors of media murder and libels galore stalking media.

But the colored people of America knew it so well when they sang: "Freedom is not free - you have to pay the price, you have to sacrifice because - freedom is not free."

In GMA's 6-year term over 40 media have been extra-judicially killed and scores of libel suits have been filed against the press. Only when the Robed One with a steel scythe appeared at his doorsteps at St Luke's Hospital did the most powerful man in the country - FG Mike Arroyo - come to his private realization and then withdrew his libel cases.

Like even American President Bill Clinton, hounded by a bad press over Monica in the "Oral House" did not want to show signs of intolerance. He knew media was a co-player in the democratic power game and he let them be. Not because Clinton liked media but because he could not escape them.

The criminals, the corrupt and the onion-skinned politicians who subsume into a self-righteous arrogance the day they get elected - should know better but they cannot.

They fail to accept that media is the nation's watchdog. Media are part of the territory who the powerful cannot just command to disappear, to whither and to die (in any order).

Public officials are fair game for media. After all, they presented themselves to the people to be elected and thereby assumed both powers and obligation (after election) to serve the people and protect the public trust placed on their shoulders. With the position comes the privilege to utilize, use or abuse power, authority and wealth for personal gain or people's welfare.

Therefore, media's relationship with the powers-that-be becomes naturally adversarial. They are critics, not collaborators of Government.

Media cannot be forced to peddle news that is designed to guarantee that everyone is happy. Forcing media to do just "positive journalism" is to engender false hopes to the people who know we are the economic basket case of Asia and the most corrupt in the region.

With that kind of dog labels, how does one expect media not to reek with negativism?
Media is a mirror of the country's image. And one does not correct that image by removing the mirror.

If they want to accentuate the positive - government can hire overpriced paid hacks and run their own newspapers, radio stations and televisions.

Sadly (or maybe happily), the fact that only few people patronize RPN 9, IBC 13 and NBC 4 television channels, a host of government owned radio stations and journals prove that people expect government to do propaganda - not to tell the entire truth.

The problem sometimes with Government is that it gets angry when shenanigans and graft are reported by private media and demand media space and attention when it does jobs it is required to do.

And media should not be shy, then as now, about its prime role in winning back our freedom of speech at EDSA in 1986. It is not entirely true that it was the soldiers - and not the journalists and poets that gave us back our freedom from Ferdinand Marcos.

Without the "mosquito media" (underground), people would not have been thoroughly informed of the excesses of the Marcoses as to be gravely distressed. Then people would not have crowded the two camps to save the soldiers from obliteration by General Fabian Ver and his pack of wolves.

It was the late Cardinal Sin who used Radio Veritas to call for People Power. It was the same "mosquito media" that finally convinced Washington (by sheer documentary) that the Marcoses had no longer gotten the people's mandate and it was time for them "to cut clean and cut cleanly."

Feeling responsible for the restoration of the press freedom - requires an even bigger resolve that media will not ever lose it again.

Freedom watcher "Reporters without Borders" had declassified down RP three more ranks into No. 142 as one of the worst countries in "freedom" with the scores of media murders and harassing libel cases proliferating in the country.

Libel has been used by powerful men to persuade media and their allies to go slow in ruffling feathers in public.

These cases mostly consume the entire career wages of poor media men who have to attend to court hearings and pay litigation fees.

However, a legislative move is gaining grounds to criminalize the wanton filing of libel cases (for purposes of harassment) - and to make the plaintiff pay for all legal damages and loss of income if the Court decides that the libel was meant to harass and stifle dissent and prejudice public interest.

Murder and threats against the press are daily fare for media today. Our usual retort has been: you can kill the messenger but not the message. Because one other messenger will pick up the fallen torch and continue the run to the finish line called The Monument of Truth.

Other forms of oppression against Media would be utilizing the police and army for wiretapping and trumped up charges (communist-links, criminal affiliation) and the BIR to take media under the microscope.

As in the case of Erap against the Inquirer, he asked his business partners to boycott the paper's advertising pages and to force the crusading paper to knell down the ground.

But in a few weeks, public opinion prevailed - Inquirer was back in business. People were now wiser - they know their own stakes in this power game between the State and all its powers and the Media - and they will do the right thing. They bought the paper and advertisers came back in droves.

To be sure - because of its adversarial role - Media will create enemies. Madam Ngo Dien Nu of Vietnam wanted a New York Times correspondent "barbecued" and she will gladly provide the matchsticks. She is just one among so many Media critics.

But the presence of critics does not invalidate - on the contrary, affirms the positive role of media in the scheme of things. For one, no one kicks a dead horse.

But as we celebrate Press Freedom Week, the challenge remains. Media men must police their ranks - because every industry has its share of scoundrels. They are those who sell their press badge. The bad eggs must not contaminate the good eggs. Let us respect our profession - so others will respect us.

Let libel cases remind us that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

We must do our homework, give the others equal space and time, drop away malice and get one's facts straight. If we err - as all humans do - admit in public and correct the mistake.

Be wary of gifts - cash, tickets, seminars, trips, dates, business opportunities and what have you - you know when they are token, goodwill or are just meant to silence and buy you. This Press Freedom Week, let us be challenged by the quote of the great assassinated Negro leader Martin Luther King who shouted "Is it the truth?" or "Is it just safe, popular or politic?"

Those who cannot readily answer that question without equivocation, kindly remove that press badge from your breast plate and shame not the others with your dishonor. Shalom.