Pressing our luck

Pressing our luck | Daily Tribune

Before the DAILY TRIBUNE, the extent of my newspaper writing experience was churning out weekly op-ed columns for three Filipino tabloids that all later folded up (not because of me, I hope).

Then I started making movie reviews for an English broadsheet, but that was intermittent, only when there were movies that I felt deserved to be reviewed.

That is why I will be eternally grateful to Boss Willie Fernandez, who asked me to write a weekly op-ed column for this paper when he ran into me at the Dusit Hotel (where decades ago, when it was called Manila Garden, I used to sing for a living at the Concourse Lounge with the late great Eli Sayson on piano).

I was both elated and honored, for I was being asked to become a columnist, not just for an ordinary broadsheet, but the DAILY TRIBUNE, no less.

A publication that I knew, even then, went over and above the call of duty as a bastion of free expression. For an Inquirer only asks, a Bulletin only posts, and a Star may dim and even fall, but a TRIBUNE, by the origin of the term from ancient Rome, protects the rights and interests of the common people — the plebeians — from the abuses of the Patricians, those who are in power.

And throughout its 26-year history, DAILY TRIBUNE has lived up to its name every day. It has lasted through four presidents and is now on its fifth. It has endured raids and physical occupation by the police. Its publishers, editors and columnists have faced countless lawsuits — criminal convictions even — but the paper remains unbowed, the spirit that animates its mission of reporting the news “without fear, without favor” undiminished, the menace of the years finding it unafraid and under the bludgeoning of chance never wincing nor crying aloud.

Such, I believe (and fear) is the lot of the Fourth Estate, especially in times that try men’s souls (to borrow from Thomas Paine), under a government where lawfare is the norm, and state institutions have been weaponized to silence critics and discordant noises.

Against such bellicose public officials and an administration highly antagonistic to the press, DAILY TRIBUNE has once again led the charge, and damn the torpedoes.

It famously coined the term “Floodgate” to refer to the trillion-peso flood control scandal, the greatest thievery in the Philippines, and has courageously continued to report on it after many have been silenced. It has championed the causes of the overseas workers at the risk of lawsuits.

All that while maintaining a happy balance of contending views among its many distinguished columnists, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Truly, DAILY TRIBUNE has pressed its luck for so long and, fortunately, its luck continues to hold. Many doomsayers have predicted the demise of the physical newspaper due to the advent of digital media, but newspapers such as ours continue to soldier on.

This is a testament not only to luck but to the essential need of a democratic society for a free press and to Boss Willie’s determination to cater to that need. For they also serve truly and well the cause of freedom, those who carry the torch of free expression.

Long may DAILY TRIBUNE and Boss Willie Fernandez live! YEAH BA!