224 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition In the 2010 elections, CMFR noted an even larger role for the new media, in terms of their keeping watch over the campaign and elections, and in enabling citizens to report and comment on them. In addition to the news sites of the broadsheets and major TV networks, citizen blogs proliferated even as the broadcasting giant ABS-CBN encouraged citizen journalism by conducting nationwide training sessions for citizens previously untrained in reporting. By way of conclusion Truth-telling in behalf of an informed people capable of exercising their rights and duties in a democracy is a fundamental responsibility of free media. Free expression and press freedom are therefore explicitly protected by the Philippine Constitution, but journalists and media workers have been targeted for assassination and harassment, and threatened by restrictive legislation. The Philippines is ofcially a democratic state and ofcially at peace, but the killing of journalists has been occurring in numbers associated with failed states, dictatorships and countries at war. A campaign for a freedom of information act has failed to convince Congress to pass it. A highly professional sector of the press, some of whose members have gained recognition internationally, co-exists with a sector that has been criticized for egregious unethical and unprofessional practice. Over a hundred schools offer courses in journalism, broadcast communication, and communication arts, but many practitioners are either untrained, or inadequately and badly trained. Media ownership is diverse on the surface, but is in reality limited to political and economic interests with a stake in the status quo and which use the power of the media to defend and enhance those interests. In a country with a long history of social unrest and political violence, the media have inevitably become an arena of contention among the various forces—some for reform, even radical change, and others for the status quo—locked in struggle in the Philippines. In the course of this contention, the Constitutional protection of press freedom and free expression has at times been ignored and has often been imperiled by those in power. The competition for ratings and advertising revenues in a limited market have also often led to professional and ethical lapses in reporting and comment, and despite the need and hunger for information on matters relevant to the life of the nation, entertainment has become the staple of newspaper and broadcast news. Under these circumstances the task of raising professional and ethical standards to enable the media to provide the information and analysis needed by a society in the throes of democratization has become the responsibility of media advocacy and journalists' groups committed to press freedom and selfregulation. Their task is made difcult by the contradictions noted above, and