Some People Need Killing

moral of this tale is: next time you ask for anything, say please.”

Every story began with the ordinary because it underscored what happened next.

My name might have been below
the headlines, but the stories I wrote belonged to other people in other places, families whose grief and pain were so massive that mine was irrelevant.

Journalists are taught they are never the story.

a corpse who had once had a name, even if all I had to go on was “Unidentified Body No. 4.”

The blue sky before the flood of corpses. The kiss goodbye before the barrage of bullets. Once after Super Typhoon Haiyan reduced Tacloban to rubble, I sat behind a camera in front of a man who asked if I could broadcast a message to his son.

him six months, and there would be an end to crime and corruption. Give him six months, and there would be an end to drugs.

He was applauded, celebrated, and in the end, inaugurated.

nation was the badlands, where the peace was broken, no citizen was safe, and every addict was armed and willing to kill.

the bleeding hearts. To hell with the bureaucracy. There would be no forgiveness, there would be no second chances, the line would be drawn, and on one side he would stand with a loaded gun.

didn’t understand that the democracy my journalism depended on was particular only to myself and a minority of others.