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The massacre trial beat: Covering a quest for justice
As soon as you enter the high-walled compound of the Quezon City Jail Annex in Taguig City where the Ampatuan multiple murder case is being heard, everyone becomes equal - well almost.
It doesn't matter if you are the justice secretary, the high-profile lawyer that defended a former president from plunder charges, or a reporter from some foreign media company.
Pass through the security that greets you at the gates and prepare to be stripped of everything essential in your line of work, especially when you're a journalist - that would include mobile phones, audio recorders, video and still cameras, and laptops. By the time you reach the court room itself, you would have already been frisked twice.
The multiple murder case in which the Ampatuans – the influential and notorious clan in southern Philippines – have been embroiled is so shocking, the Quezon City court hearing the case was apparently left with no choice but to restrict live coverage of the proceedings lest they turn into a "trial by publicity." That apparently also required the ban on any recording devices.
For print reporters, the policy seems bearable: It is simply a matter of relearning the use of the pen and paper as the main tools of the profession.
Those who balk at the restriction the most are from the broadcast media, where, because news reports have to be accompanied either by video or sound bites, technology is absolutely necessary.
For online reporters like myself, who depend on mobile phones or laptops to break the news, not having my gadgets with me also prove to be tricky. I eventually developed a skill for “sensing" if it’s the hearing’s “down time" – when not too many important details are being discussed in court – and rushing outside the premises to file a breaking story.
Trailing the trial from place to place
I was assigned to cover the trial in its early stages, when the proceedings were still being held inside Camp Crame in Quezon City and the judge was still hearing prime suspect Andal Ampatuan Jr's bail petition. (Security at the old venue was as tight as at the current one.)
When the hearing was transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa, due to space limitations and logistical concerns, most defense reporters dropped out of the "Ampatuan" beat.
Lucky (or unlucky in some respects) for me, I was instructed by my editors to follow the case no matter where it went, even if that meant doubling my travel time from home. When the trial resumed in September, I, along with a few other colleagues who stuck to the case, was introduced to new faces – mostly journalists covering southern Metro Manila beats.
At some point, some of our "Bicutan classmates" began complaining about being assigned to the Ampatuan beat. One reporter told me he could hardly keep track of the case because the court hearing the case is actually based in Quezon City.
It’s the Quezon City beat reporters who first get wind of any petition or motion filed in court. By the time our Bicutan classmates find out about it, the trial would have already resumed – leaving some of them clueless about what’s being discussed.
More recently, proceedings were transferred yet again, this time to Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes' home base at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221, a rather cramped and smaller court room inside the Quezon City Hall compared to the two previous venues. Hearings will continue in Quezon City as long as the presence of the accused are unnecessary because medico-legal experts are the only ones testifying.
The elusive interviews
Getting the accused to speak to us has also proven difficult, especially when jail guards shield them from prying reporters – unless you're from the foreign press.
There was this one time after a hearing in Bicutan when we tried approaching the suspects seated on the bench to get their reaction on the proceedings, but the guards wouldn't let us.
A few moments later, as we were leaving the room, we saw a radio news crew from Germany interviewing the same suspects while the jail guards surrounded them – obviously to keep us away.
In another instance, a defense lawyer was reluctant to grant an interview to the local media, but agreed to be dragged outside the court room for an on-camera interview with a news crew from the BBC (British Broadcast Company).
"Sa foreign media lang sila nakikipag-usap kasi alam nilang hindi makikita dito sa Pilipinas ang interview nila," said one reporter, who had failed to interview the lawyer that day.
Lawyers have apparently been careful about facing reporters for fear of violating the sub judice rule, which bars parties to the case from giving opinions to the media on the merits of the case.
The fact that the case involves mass murder, of course, resonates among us. At one point the court had to suspend the hearings due to some technicalities raised by the defense.
Hoping to get a reaction from the families, I approached the mother of massacre victim Victor Nuñez, Catherine, who was fighting back her tears as she expressed disappointment over the suspension.
Like most of the family members who were attending the trial, she had traveled hundreds of kilometers from Mindanao to Manila only to return home that day without seeing any progress in the trial.
I must admit the sight of the mothers, daughters, and wives weeping while exiting the court room moved me, although as reporters, we have to distance ourselves from the story and control our emotions.
Those emotions include our very own outrage or frustration over reports that some suspects detained at the facility are getting special treatment, a claim repeatedly denied by the jail warden.
Becoming the news
But perhaps one of the biggest problems that we have to hurdle is when we unintentionally become part of the news. Recently, the defense cried foul over media reports about its cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, which the defense claimed put its lawyers in a bad light. [See related: Ampatuan trial defendant wants prosecutors, PDI cited in contempt]
Some of our colleagues covering the Supreme Court are facing the danger of being cited in contempt after another defense lawyer claimed the "confidential" disbarment case against him - filed in the high court - should not have been reported in the news.
But at the end of the day, everything pays off when we are reminded that after the sweat and long hours, we are helping document one of the most important trials in the nation's history.
Seeing a smile from the usually stern Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes helps lighten some of the burdens of covering a trial for such a despicable crime.
More than one year after the killings, only a handful are being tried while over a hundred suspects are still free, and we are left to conclude – with the image in our minds of the victims’ relatives leaving the court room in tears – that the quest for justice has a long way to go. - GMA News
(An earlier version of this article was published in the PJR Reports - November and December 2010 issue)
