If proven to be work-related, Melinda Magsino's would be the 148th case of a journalist killed in the Philippines in the line of duty since 1986, the 27th under the Aquino administration, and the second this year.
This statement was originally published on cmfr-phil.org on 15 April 2015.
A former newspaper correspondent was shot dead in Batangas City, Batangas Province on 13 April 2015. Batangas is 108 kilometers south of Manila.
Melinda “Mei” Magsino, a former correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was walking down a city street at about 12:10 in the afternoon when a man approached her from behind and shot her. Magsino died on the spot. The gunman fled on a motorcycle driven by another man to an unknown direction after the incident.
The police were still gathering information about a possible suspect at this writing. They were also looking into offensive posts against Magsino in her Facebook account days before she was killed.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is doing a separate investigation. NBI-CALABARZON Director Constantino Joson said that the agency is looking at three possible angles in the killing.
If proven to be work-related, Magsino’s would be the 148th case of a journalist killed in the line of duty since 1986, the 27th under the Aquino administration, and the second this year.
In 2005, the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility reported threats against Magsino when she exposed alleged corruption in Batangas Province that angered then governor Armando Sanchez. Magsino was advised by the police to leave Batangas because two prisoners from the provincial jail had supposedly been “released” with orders to kill her.
Magsino was a correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer until 2005. She wrote articles for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in 2007 and for Vera Files in 2011. Magsino was also a correspondent of TV5 from September 2010 to August 2013.
In 2010, Magsino published the local weekly Southern Luzon Inquirer together with another local reporter. The paper ran from January to August 2010. After it stopped printing, Southern Luzon Inquirer continued reporting online. The website was last updated on September 2014.
According to Magsino’s partner Benjie Reyes, Magsino was a freelance Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writer and an online marketer. SEO writers produce content for websites and webpages to increase their ranking and chances of appearing in the first pages of search engines like Google.
Magsino was also managing a health clinic with Reyes at the time of her death.
