When I first entered the field of journalism a decade or so ago, there was a lack of deeper comprehension on the notion of it being a dangerous job. As a student journalist, I thought the worst we could experience was for professors to retaliate through our academic performances. I’ve always heard and been a fan of the works of mainstream media practitioners—name it—but have never quite figured out what it is about their job at the newsroom, or even on-field, that makes it particularly unsafe.

It wasn’t like they needed to wear a vest just in case bullets come to shower them… or a bomb would drop right over their heads. Right? I didn’t know.

Until I stepped into the streets and saw the passion driven by a fractured political system. I saw people, angered, across different generations rally against corruption, call on political names—regardless of power—for accountability, and bring light to systemic issues that make the Philippines the broken country it is today. I saw journalists, students and practitioners alike, get swept through the streets and tumble against Philippine National Police (PNP)-installed barbed wires. Hurt for speaking up. Hurt for simply reporting. 

I didn’t know what red-tagging was until Manny Asuncion, whom my Philippine Politics and Governance instructor only used to talk about as a colleague, died in a police raid on what has since been called the Bloody Sunday Massacre. Eight other activists perished during that encounter. But Manny dedicated his life to being a labor leader and human rights defender. He fought for living wages, labor rights, and human rights. So I couldn’t understand why he had to be the one to go. P’wede namang mga kurakot na lang.

My doubts were confronted with realities when journalists started disappearing and getting killed in the practice. Bringing it closer to perspective, RJ Ledesma, who was among the casualties of the recent “official military operations” at Toboso, Negros Occidental that killed 19 individuals, was once the Editor-in-Chief of a student publication from a fellow Lasallian institution. He was a student journalist, the same way I am. Only that, no, we are not the same. He was far more than I could ever be.

What I don’t understand now is how people think these killings are justified. And perhaps that was the most difficult realization of all. I had always assumed that violence required distance, that those who enable it were powerful people sitting in offices, signing documents and issuing orders. That it wasn’t something I would have to fear in what I do. But

I realized that violence survives because ordinary people learn to rationalize it—not through weapons, but through indifference. Through jokes. Through memes. 

When the news of Alyssa Alano’s demise first broke, the internet was quick to make a spectacle out of it. She was labelled names and red-tagged despite being long past her own death. People failed to realize that in the hours of her passing, she was as helpless as any civilian would’ve been. The same stays true for RJ, Errol Wendel, Maureen Santuyo, Lyle Prijoles, and Kai Sorem. In a matter of hours, their years of work and sacrifice were overshadowed by narratives designed to make their deaths easier to dismiss. 

The people who died in Toboso were out extending hands for oppressed communities despite its risks, while the internet laughed comfortably at home, jumping in the troll train of enabling the death of someone’s brother, daughter, and friend. Their deaths were met with mockery. Timelines filled with persistent jokes and comments reducing their lives to “corned beef” and other forms of ridicule. It is unsettling how quickly we have learned to consume tragedy as entertainment. How comfortable we have become in laughing at death when it belongs to someone we have already decided not to understand.

It is ironic because many of the people mocked online dedicated their lives to fighting for better wages, labor rights, accessible services, and dignified living conditions. They were human rights workers, journalists. They stood with communities struggling against the very inequalities that continue to define daily life for millions of Filipinos. 

And yes, you eat those corned beefs. You eat them because wages remain inadequate. Because prices continue to rise faster than incomes. Because generations of Filipinos have been taught to endure deprivation as though it were an unavoidable fact of life. And you have learned to settle for less. The people you mock spent their lives challenging those conditions. The people you celebrate often benefit from preserving them. 

What’s more tragic is that the same people laughing at the deaths of activists and community workers are often the very people these individuals sought to serve. They are victims of the same systems, burdened by the same economic realities, yet convinced to direct their anger toward those who stand beside them rather than those who stand above them.

Journalism taught me many things, but perhaps the most important lesson is that every statistic is a person. Sometimes, you report those numbers, or worse yet, you become part of it. Every headline contains a life far more complex than the few words used to describe it. The least we can do is refuse to become participants in their dehumanization.

There is a different level of ire when numbers dictate how someone’s life should be remembered. Someone who has sacrificed so much of themselves in community work, someone who has always lived to die for you—yes, ma’am, you—who sits at your makeshift dining table and eats canned goods, say corned beef, because that’s all you can afford. Because the very people in power you so vehemently support have dictated you to be the hopeful, loyalist citizen living in a ragged tagpi-tagpi of a household. In those people’s eyes, you are but a mere tool to elevate positions—widening the gap between their throne and yourself. That is all you’ll ever be in their eyes.

Yes, you are a victim. And by being the funny guy on the internet laughing at the death of someone who has dedicated their life to be your ally, you continue to make yourself as one.

Originally published in Heraldo Filipino Volume 40, Issue 2