The gunman entered the studio of the provincial channel Juan Jumalón posing as a listener.
He then shot the 57-year-old twice during a morning live broadcast in the city of Calamba, in West Misamis province, police said.
The assailant ripped the victim’s gold necklace off before fleeing on a motorcycle with a couple waiting outside M’s house. Jumalon, police said.
– NUJP (@nujp) November 5, 2023
An investigation is underway to identify the shooter and whether the attack was work-related.
The Philippines has long been one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. strongly condemned the shooting and ordered the national police to find, arrest and prosecute the killers.
“Attacks on bloodhounds will not be tolerated in our democracy and those who threaten press freedom will face the full consequences of their actions,” he said in a statement.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, a body that monitors press freedom, said Jumalon, the 199th journalist killed in the country since 1986, when democracy returned after the “people’s power” uprising that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the father of the current one-president, and forced him and his circle of relatives into exile in the United States.
“The attack is all the more reprehensible as it took place at Jumalon’s home, which also served as a radio station,” the watchdog said.
– NUJP (@nujp) November 5, 2023
A video of the attack shows Jumalon wearing glasses fighting anything away from the camera before two shots rang out. He slumps into his chair as the background music continues.
He pronounced dead while being taken to the hospital.
The attacker didn’t notice it on the Facebook livestream, but police said they were checking to see if security cameras installed in the space and in neighbors’ homes had recorded anything.
In 2009, members of a hardline extended political family and their affiliates shot dead 58 people, as well as 32 media workers, in a brazen attack that amounted to an execution in the southern province of Maguindanao. It is the deadliest attack on journalists in recent history.
While those massacres were later connected to a violent electoral rivalry that is not unusual in many rural areas, they also highlighted the threats faced by bloodhounds in the Philippines.
A glut of unlicensed guns, personal armies controlled through hardcore clans and weak law enforcement in rural spaces are among the security disruptions faced by journalists in the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
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