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— The Editors

How I came to know about the 1972 martial law

By Severino Samonte

September 21, 2018, 12:53 pm

MANILA -- Where were you when President Ferdinand Marcos began implementing Proclamation No. 1081 that placed the entire country under a state of martial law?

That, in a nutshell, was the question former Philippines Herald executive editor Jose L. Pavia asked during our very first meeting at the second floor of the National Press Club (NPC) building in Intramuros, Manila sometime in the first week of January 1973.

Pavia came to the former editorial office of the closed Philippine News Service (PNS) to discuss the possible composition of the first set of stringers and correspondents of the then being planned government-run Philippine News Agency.

It was the first time for me to meet Pavia personally, although being the graveyard shift deskman of PNS, I used to talk with him on the phone whenever he wanted to get additional details on certain PNS stories they wanted to use in the Herald.

He came together with a colleague from the Philippines Herald, senior editor Renato B. Tiangco, who was also a former deskman at the international news agencies Agence France Presse (AFP) and United Press International (UPI).

At that time, I still did not know that they had decided to take me in as the national news editor of the soon-to-be-born PNA to replace the erstwhile PNS, which was forced to cease operations due to the enforcement of Proclamation No. 1081 issued by then President Marcos.

This, more or less, was the gist of what I told Pavia and Tiangco:

I had just arrived at the PNS office on the night of Friday, Sept. 22, 1972, when I got an urgent telephone call from our reporter Jaime Panesa, who was then covering Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame for the night shift.

Panesa informed me that a three-vehicle convoy of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile was ambushed moments ago by unidentified gunmen somewhere in Mandaluyong City. He said Enrile was on his way home to Makati from Camp Crame when his convoy was fired upon.

Nobody in the convoy was hurt, Panesa said, adding that he was rushing to Mandaluyong from Camp Crame to get more details. As all of the other PNS editors and deskmen had already gone home by then, I advised Panesa to call me again as soon as he had the facts.

He did so shortly after 10 p.m. and dictated to me the story, which I immediately edited and transmitted by the so-called “takes” on the PNS wires.

(In news agency language, the term “take” means the first paragraph of a major story. which is labeled as “bulletin” and accompanied by bells; the second as “urgent”, then followed by other details as they become available.)

After moving the first three paragraphs of the story I headlined “Enrile unhurt in ambush”, I decided to call up a deskman friend at the Manila Times, located at Florentino Torres St. in Sta. Cruz, to inform him about the urgent story. There was no answer from the other end, so I tried two other numbers, but like the first, there was no response.

Wondering why, I tried the Manila Chronicle telephone, but just the same, there was no answer from it.

I was about to tell our night-duty messenger to deliver copies of the story to the Manila Times and the Manila Chronicle, then situated along Aduana St. (now A. Soriano Ave.) near the Manila Cathedral, when the telephone rang. That was shortly after 11 p.m. and I heard from the other end the voice of Orville Mauricio, then publisher-editor of the weekly Metropolitan Mail being published in Caloocan City.

Orville was a younger brother of then Philippine Graphic magazine executive editor Luis Mauricio. He informed me that his brother, also a former executive editor of the pre-martial law Manila Chronicle, was picked up by military men and taken to Camp Crame. I took note of the information and began going over the files of past PNS stories for a possible background on a news item I was thinking of writing about the arrest of Mauricio.

Graphic magazine and the Manila Chronicle were among the arch critics of the then six-and-a-half-year-old Marcos administration, together with the Manila Times and the Philippines Free Press, among other publications.

Shortly after midnight, I officially learned that martial law had been imposed nationwide and almost all media establishments, including radio and television stations, shut down.

This time, the information came from then radio broadcaster Rafael “Paeng” Yabut, who used to come to the PNS office to pick up the latest wire stories he would use in his early morning news-musical program at Radio DZRH, then located at the former Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) building along Arroceros St. near the Manila City Hall.

Yabut, who was then also a major in the Philippine Constabulary-Metropolitan Command (PC-Metrocom), told me that many other critics of the Marcos administration had been arrested.

In the case of PNS, there was no closure order, but just the same, we had to stop transmission of stories by wires since our subscribers – mostly newspapers and radio-TV stations -- were already shut down.

I learned later that an editor of PNS, Atty. Manuel F. Almario, was among the media personalities arrested, together with contributing editor Juan L. Mercado, former chief executive officer of Depthnews Asia. They were released from detention after a week.

Almario later worked at the Bureau of Internal Revenue and became editor of the Graphic magazine, while Mercado was taken in by the United Nations Population Commission for assignment in Bangkok, Thailand.

On the morning of Sept. 23, I left the PNS office at 6 a.m. Unlike the previous mornings, I was not able to read the first edition of national newspapers that day.

When I arrived in Novaliches 45 minutes later, I found many people wondering why there were no newspapers in their favorite newsstands and their radio and TV sets were silent.

One newspaper dealer told me that the first copies of newspapers that arrived for him were confiscated by soldiers.

Although I already knew the reason, I preferred to proceed home, sleep and wait until President Marcos announced officially the effectivity of martial law in the evening of the same day. He appeared on the TV together with then Information Minister and later Senator Francisco S. Tatad. (PNA)

(Editor’s note: The writer was the nightshift deskman of the privately-owned Philippine News Service, which was forced to cease operations after former President Ferdinand E. Marcos imposed a nationwide state of martial law in September 1972. He was later named national news editor of the state-run Philippine News Agency.)

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