MANILA -- Pablo Hernandez held a 9mm handgun with his right hand, steadied it with his left, sighted on a target 30 feet away and fired. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Spent shells dropped away, and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air.
The target was cardboard, but one day it could be a real person. Hernandez, a columnist for a Philippines tabloid, evaded an assassin's bullets last month. He is among a group of reporters, columnists and broadcasters who are campaigning to arm journalists in response to violence against them.
Since 2000, more than 20 journalists have been killed in connection with their work, making the Philippines the deadliest country in the world for the profession, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
The killings have all taken place in rural provinces, where corrupt officials, including police, compound the problem. Many of the victims have been radio broadcasters who voiced their opinions on the air. In response to the attacks, some reporters last month formed the Association of Responsible Media, or ARMED.
"We're not waiting for the policemen. We ourselves can now shoot back," said Joel Syegco, a police reporter for the Manila Standard Today newspaper and the group's founder. He wore a black T-shirt with the message: "Stop Killing Journalists."
"If somebody should come at me, point a gun at me, should I wait for him to shoot me?" he asked.
Other journalists and advocates for press freedom expressed alarm, saying that carrying guns would not offer protection but instead create more violence and bloodshed. They fear a culture of vigilantism in a society where the rule of law is tenuous.
"Guns and journalists are a pretty deadly mix," said Inday Espina-Varona, chairwoman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. "We live in a pressure-cooker world, always tense, always on the run, terribly overworked and terribly underpaid, especially in the Philippines. When you're hot, in a temper, a weapon of self-defense can inadvertently be turned into a weapon against innocent people."
Espina-Varona noted that several journalists who have been killed in the last few years had been carrying weapons. The formation of ARMED "is a cry of desperation," she said. "I don't want my colleagues to fall into the trap of picking up a responsibility that is the government's."
Nathan Lee, a researcher at the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility in Manila, attributes the killings to "a vicious cycle of violence" spawned by widespread lawlessness and corruption. The cycle goes something like this: Broadcasters or columnists condemn the corruption, the targets retaliate with threats or assassination attempts, and the local police are either unable or unwilling to protect the accusers.
"We don't think there is a conscious effort to silence these journalists," Lee said.
According to the Center for Media Freedom, 53 journalists have been killed since 1986, when the totalitarian regime of President Ferdinand Marcos was ousted and the press opened up. In only two cases were there convictions. Five cases have been dismissed, 22 are pending and the rest are under investigation. Judicial reform is also needed.
