
A female journalist was gunned down near her home in the southern Philippines on Oct. 22.
Maria Vilma Rodriguez, 56, was a radio anchor with 105.9 E-Media Production Network, based in her hometown, Zamboanga City in Mindanao.
She was shot three times in the abdomen by a gunman who came on a motorbike to the store where Rodriguez was spending time with her sister, mother, and nephew in Tumaga, in Zamboanga City, at around 8 p.m.
The store is located a few meters away from the house of Rodriguez, a single mother of four children.
However, Rodriguez managed to walk towards her home and tell one of her daughters what happened, said Julie Alipala, another Zamboanga-based journalist.
Rodriguez was rushed to the Zamboanga City Medical Center where she died at around 9:37 p.m.
She became the fifth journalist to be killed since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power in June 2022, according to media groups.
The Zamboanga unit of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemned the killing and sought a thorough probe.
“We don’t need another unsolved case that might end up as another statistic on a growing list of victims,” the NUJP said in a statement on Oct. 22.
E-Media’s executive Rey Bayoging told the NUJP that Rodriguez had worked with the company for nearly a year.
Her radio program — Barangay (village) Action Center — “was not a hard-hitting one,” Bayoging said.
The radio and television company called on police to quickly catch the killer.
“Why is it so easy to bring in guns to this city and kill people?” asked Bayoging.
According to the NUJP, Rodriguez is the second female journalist to be killed in Zamboanga after Gloria Martin in 1992.
After Marcos Jr. came to power, radio reporter Rey Blanco was stabbed to death on Negros Island in September 2022, followed by the shooting of broadcaster Percival Mabasa by motorcycle-riding gunmen in October in the capital Manila.
In May 2023, broadcaster Crecenciano Bunduquin was killed in Calapan City in Oriental Mindoro.
In November 2023, radioman Juan Jumalon was killed during a live broadcast by a lone gunman who pretended to be a listener in the victim’s home-based radio station in Misamis Occidental.
In a February report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Philippines “remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists,” with 117 journalists killed there in the last 30 years with 81 unsolved cases.
On Nov. 23, 2009, the Catholic-majority nation witnessed the “Maguindanao massacre” where 32 journalists, along with 26 other people, were killed in Maguindanao province on Mindanao Island.