The Federation of Reporters for Empowerment and Equality
(FREE) is a Central Mindanao-based association of feisty
journalists working for peace and development in the region.
It was established on July 5, 1997 with the formal induction
of the association' s first set of officers witnessed by
the 16 founding members.
FREE was organized at a time when Cotabato City, the federation's
base, and many parts of Mindanao were beset by violence,
the destruction of the environment, the increasing marginalization
of poor and vulnerable communities, kidnapping for ransom,
the harassment of journalists, and the rampant practice
of "envelopmental" journalism.
"We knew we had to do something and the only way we knew
how was to organize ourselves first," says Romy Elusfa,
FREE secretary general.
The founders initially thought of FREE as a tactical alliance
of journalists that would be convened only when there are
pressing issues that need to be addressed with one voice.
But there were other critical and urgent factors that would
later lead them to rethink the purpose of FREE.
"Realizing that the majority of the people in the communities
that we serve are helpless and voiceless against the powers
that be, and finding a number of socially relevant issues
that the commercial media outfits never tackled, the Federation
hosted a weekly press forum dubbed FREEFLOW. It served as
a venue for lumads (indigenous people), Muslims and Christians
to air their sentiments and concerns," says Elusfa.
It then tried producing a version of FREEFLOW on television
but the scarcity of advertising revenues prompted the members
to scrap the project after several episodes.
On July 2, 1998, FREE began publishing the weekly paper
Headliner, the first newspaper in Mindanao wholly owned
by journalists who are members of FREE.
But the turning point for FREE came on May 29, 2000 during
its second general assembly when keynote speaker Cotabato
Arhcbishop Orlando Quevedo, OMI, who is also president of
the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, posed
three major challenges to the Mindanao journalists: truth,
integrity and Mindanao perspective.
"The challenge for truth urged us to persistently seek
the truth behind the news; integrity called us to maintain
our integrity and to remain credible in the community, and;
Mindanao perspective enjoined us to present news and opinion
according to the perspective of the Mindanaoans and work
toward influencing national policy makers to also adopt
the Mindanao problem as theirs, too," Elusfa explains.
From there FREE began embarking on a series of other activities
including a public journalism project on the May 2001 elections.
Some of its more notable undertakings were:
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