The truth unmasks dictators; but will it drown with disinformation?

By Dr. Marivir Montebon

The UP Cebu College of Communication, Art, and Design - CCAD organized its 3rd Annual Martial Law Literacy Month Series on September 1-5, 2025, where Marivir Montebon spoke on Campus Journalism at the time of Martial Law. Her talk was titled ‘The truth unmasks dictators, but will it drown with disinformation?’

From a meaning-seeking teenager to a New York-based journalist, Montebon shares her journey in journalism, media ethics, and press freedom. She asks: What hope does humanity have amid disinformation fueling dictatorships worldwide?

Through the lens of media, culture, and politics, Montebon examines power dynamics in the Philippines and beyond, and how mass media’s technological evolution has both challenged and reinforced these structures.

Marivir Montebon, 2nd speaker of UP Cebu’s 3rd Annual Martial Law Literacy Month Series on September 3/4, 2025.

Excerpts of her lecture (Some parts have not been read during the presentation in the interest of time):

Good morning, everyone. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you, Dr. Rose Arong and Prof. Mayette Tabada, for the invitation.

This webinar takes me down memory lane – my youth, and during college days at the University of San Carlos where I became a campus journalist of Today’s Carolinian, the resurrected student paper from the defunct The Carolinian which folded because of Martial Law.

Our conversation today will be very personal, political, professional, and spiritual. Dealing with truth, as we journalists profess, is a spiritual matter. It deeply involves self-honesty and bravery, qualities that are of the spirit, not just of the superficial material, self-gratifying realm of human beings.

The truth we dig, and share is no longer about just us, but for the greater good of humanity.

I have been so fond of the saying, “The truth will set you free, but first, it will make you miserable,” since I first saw it in the corridor of my alma mater Colegio dela Inmaculada Concepcion. It was the inscription of the famous rug doll Raggedy Ann who was stuck in a chair.  

Indeed, we must deal with deception and all kinds of falsehoods as we seek the truth.  

Pres. Marcos Sr. explaining his imposition of Martial Law on September 21, 1972. (Photo grab from Google)

Martial Law baby and EDSA teen

Marcos was president from 1965-1986. I was born in 1966, making me an ML baby and an EDSA teenager.

He had two terms as president, 1965-69 and 1969-73. When his second term was about to end in 1973, he declared ML on Sept. 21, 1972, citing that the Philippines was on the verge of communist take-over. He manipulated the Constitutional Convention to draft a new Constitution, the 1973 Constitution. He arrested his political opponents, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and shut down media.  

Take note of the indicators of Martial Law - the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, which means the presentation of a person before the court for proper filing of charges, instead of being disappeared or detained without charges. And the shutting down of the press. Marcos closed The Free Press, Manila Times, ABS, and all campus papers during Martial Law.

Montebon: Campus journalists were an integral part of the student movement that toppled Marcos.

My young life was pretty much normal, except for some time when I saw people marching and shouting on the streets (rallies) and at one time, a soldier strafed his machine gun inside our store, almost hitting a toddler who was playing in their apartment above us. There was no conversation in our family after that incident as far as I can remember.

Campus journalists of CEGP in Cebu, circa 1987.

When ML was imposed, I was six years old, a kindergarten child who was just learning the alphabet. My memory was clear that day. My uncles and aunties who were then in college were home early because there was a 6pm curfew. I didn’t quite understand what they were talking about, but I sensed they were frightened.

I feared that my parents were not home yet that evening. At that young age, I was scared that they would be put to prison for not coming home at 6PM. I remembered kneeling before our altar of saints, praying to them to bring my parents home.

When they arrived, I felt like a happy puppy. We had dinner. That day, our sari-sari store, one of the biggest in our neighborhood, was particularly busy.

Going to school, I learned my Panatang Makabayan, sang Mabuhay ang Pilipino, and I also noticed that the size of our beloved pan de sal was shrinking. Also, I discovered that I love writing. My school compositions were often read in class. My classmates enjoyed my ghost stories that I shared during our talent sessions in the mornings.

Activism – My kind of teenage rage

Time flew fast; I was in high school. It was quite accidental or providential that I had a socio-cultural enlightenment in my dramatics club. Our trainers from PETA opened my eyes – that we are in search of a Filipino form of art, as we are in search of ourselves.

That was my gentle lesson of colonialism, through the arts, why we have this colonial mentality that divides us, a deep layer that we haven’t truly touched who we are as a person and as a people.

I wanted to take up journalism. But my father wouldn’t agree. He said it’s a dangerous profession and there’s no money in it.

Young and clueless, I agreed to take up Accounting. Accounting! On the first semester, I was unhappy, and I thought I’d go crazy trying to understand debit, credit, etc. I negotiated successfully with my father that I shift to Psychology, which had no big Math subjects. He agreed as a compromise, because he never wanted me to take up journalism.

Lo and behold, the SSG advertised that the Today’s Carolinian 1983 was going to open and that they were taking in 20 editorial staff. I joined the exams. I passed it. I got in on my 1st year starting off as news reporter.

Then I became Features editor, Managing editor, and Editor-in-chief, coinciding with Cory Aquino as the first woman president and leading a revolutionary government in 1986.

I have used all post-modern media technology, BTW. I used the pen and paper and tape recorder. I used the typewriter. I am glad I could touch type because of our Typing class at USC. I used the computer, laptop, and now the cellphone.

Major takeaways

Today’s Carolinian came alive because of the student movement in Cebu. I was standing on the shoulders of the older student activists who pressed on towards democratization of our society and community.

The greatest advice I got from National Artist Dr. Resil Mojares, then our publication adviser, was when he told me to try to be a journalist, not a propagandist. I embraced that advice dearly.  Journalism means talking to people, listening to their stories, doing research, and writing about it.

MM: I was stationed in the era of Marcos’ eventual downfall through the consistent people’s resistance and the looming economic crisis.

Propaganda, on the other hand, means writing with a raw political agenda in mind. Sloganeering, I later realized brands who you are and does not necessarily make people think or understand you.  

My involvement with the College Editors Guild of the Philippines made me mature, politically, that is. Organizing became more serious and expanded. I had to deal with internal politics too. I was national VP in 1986-87 with Raul Laguitan as president.

Lesson learned: Always organize your ranks, always have a community of journalists. We organized the high school writer’s guild of the Cebu. We had a good amount of money as an organization from the training we conducted.

There were distractions at that time. There was a group that challenged CEGP, they created their own student group. I didn’t bother questioning them or stopping them. A few months later, their group fizzled out.  

I would like to emphasize two major moments that led to EDSA. First, the walkout of the Comelec technicians who refused to encode the fake election results that supposedly indicated that Marcos won the elections. That was the watershed moment for people to call for Marcos to resign. The walkout was all over the news.

Second, the brave June Keithley together with Fr. James Reuters who continued their media coverage of the buildup at EDSA. We were in Cebu then, all we heard was the voice of a woman doing the reportage on Radio Bandido, on the ongoing number of rallyists at EDSA which eventually toppled Marcos.

Of course, we know that the US helicoptered the Marcos family to Hawaii to escape. The Philippines was an example of active non-violence in deposing a dictator. You will see that in this period, the USSR broke down, Germany was unified, and so on.

The gains of EDSA and what were wasted

Press freedom was a major gain after EDSA. Philippine media became the freest in Asia.

The establishment of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism by Sheila Coronel and Malou Mangahas is a hallmark in Philippine journalism. Being trained by PCIJ was valuable and useful.

The legislation of the Partylist System was a major gain too and gave way to the representation of marginalized sectors in Congress. But as we now know, this system has been coopted by traditional political families.

Elementary and high school education was also expanded.

Legacy of Marcos, Post-EDSA stagnation/backslide

Militarism and a militarist culture is a legacy of Marcos. That’s why red tagging is still rampant.

Unchecked corrupt systems in government have exacerbated poverty and inequality.

The absence of a comprehensive national development strategy to focus on land distribution and development and energy has made us economically stunted.

And finally, there is an education vacuum right after EDSA because of the absence of History and Human Rights education. People are vulnerable to red tagging and have not reached a level of political maturity due to the lack of History and Human Rights education.

By now, we already realize that without institutionalization of rights and programs through education and governance, we normalize injustice, and we fall into tokenism, piece-meal events, rhetoric, and impunity.

As for the Philippines being the freest press in Asia, we also see the massive killings of journalists since the EDSA Uprising.

In 2022, the Philippines ranks 147th out of 180 countries with the most no. of journalists killed. Sri Lanka is on the 146th spot, while Ukraine is on 106th. 

The Reporters without Borders said the Philippines is one of the deadliest countries for journalists. During the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippines saw the most no. of journalists killed (103 with 32 in a massacre in Maguindanao).

The birth of digital technology and the twilight of the newspaper industry

The birth of digital journalism was the twilight of the newspaper industry. Early in the digital technology, there seems to be hope of democratizing news and information. In 2012, I set up my digital news platform with my daughter who was taking up Media Technology. I thought we would set up our online magazine and eventually she would run it. However, she passed away in 2019. She is my grief and my energy too. I continue to do our journalism work.

These are some of women-owned digital news companies – Awesome Media Ltd., The FilAm, The Huffington Post, and Rappler Philippines.

I’d like to let you know that the US has an ethnic media industry - small, on shoe-string budgets, and serving their own ethnic markets. It’s not just the corporate media that you see. We are more grounded than corporate media.

Take note that in the 1990s onwards, the world saw the flourishing of global issues on women’s rights, environment, indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ+ issues.  These themes are reflected very well in the ethnic media, I would say more realistically than the corporate media do.

Disinformation: The greatest challenge today

The proliferation of fake news is undoubtedly the greatest problem of journalism today. Digital technology has now weaponized disinformation to further divide people according to their political or ideological preferences, has facilitated the rise of dictators, and the vulnerability of everyone’s personal data theft.

These days, nuclear wars could happen, or our bank accounts and health information stolen digitally by simply typing computer code.

We need to crack the genius of digital technology that could flag fake news before it is even distributed or streamed. Fake news runs faster than the speed of light. We will never develop without the truth.

So, what are we to do? I’d like very much to seriously do these

1.       Institutionalize INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM & TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNALISM

2.       Institutionalize HUMAN RIGHTS & HISTORY EDUCATION

3.       Be Digital Tech warriors for truth; tell and write stories of people in a context

4.       Hold on to our media ethics; and be a life-long learner.

5.       Organize your community of journalists and support systems

Thank you so much. We can now have a discussion. #