On the early morning of September 23, 1972, soldiers in full combat gear barged into newsrooms to execute President Ferdinand Marcos’s order the previous day: to take over all privately-owned newspapers, radio stations, and television networks across the country. Thousands of journalists were arrested, about 8,000 lost their jobs, and what was left of what was once the freest press in Southeast Asia were two newspapers and a television network, all owned by Marcos and his cronies. 

Out of this bleak situation for the Philippine press emerged groups of gutsy journalists — which would later be christened collectively as the mosquito press — who defied Marcos’s orders and published uncompromising articles that pierced the veil of mainstream propaganda. 

The foremost figure of the mosquito press was Jose G. Burgos, Jr., known to many as Joe Burgos, the first journalist to publish an independent newspaper and hold Marcos to account.

Child of the ‘60s

A gifted writer with a nose for good stories, Joe Burgos already worked as a reporter in college, covering the police beat for the Times-Mirror-Taliba chain of newspapers. He studied philosophy at the University of Santo Tomas for almost ten years, beginning in 1958, but because of the demands of his job, he never finished his degree. His father, an Ilocano newspaperman who had put out community newspapers and owned a printing press, influenced him to write independently. He became editor-in-chief of The Varsitarian, besting Kit Tatad, a fellow philosophy student who later became Marcos’s minister of public information. 

He was just like any regular college kid at the time: He drank frequently with friends, and played pinball with his younger brother, Bobby, at the arcades in Manila. He was tall and lean, wore plaid shirts and wide metal-rimmed glasses, had long hair and a mustache. He liked to listen to Frank Sinatra and Gary Granada on his turntable. An ardent Catholic, he prayed the rosary every day, took daily communion, and always prayed the Angelus at sunrise, at noon, and at sundown. He was outdoorsy, and on weekends, he liked to camp.

In 1964, when he was 23 and still at UST, he met Edita Tronqued, a student from Bicol who would later become a teacher and one of the staunchest human rights advocates of her generation. Theirs was a whirlwind romance, and they got married a year after they met. They would later have five children. 

“He was a cool dad,” said his son, Jose Luis, whom they call J.L. When Edita warned J.L. about the dangers of joining protest rallies in college, Joe said, “Hayaan mo siya. Para malaman niya.” His aversion to authoritarianism and belief in democratic decision-making were apparent even in how he managed the home: All seven of them would sit at a table and hold regular meetings—what they called “councils” — to decide on even the most mundane family matters, like what movie to watch at the cinema. This is a family tradition that the Burgoses carry on up to this day.

First Crusade

In 1977, while working as a public affairs manager at the government-owned and controlled Philippine National Oil Company — a job that allowed his family to live a comfortable life—Joe got fed up with the propaganda fodder being spewed out by the mainstream press, and decided that he would start an independent newspaper that would hold Marcos accountable. 

He recruited young campus writers, and they set up shop at a modest office sandwiched between a funeral parlor and a nightclub on Quezon Avenue in Quezon City. All they had at first was an Underwood typewriter and a table borrowed from the National Press Club. They had to build their own network of dealers, since the big dealers only sold the Marcos-owned papers and wanted nothing to do with them. The first issue of WE For the Young Filipino, later renamed WE Forum, came out on May 1, 1977.

At work, Joe would not let anyone call him “sir” or “boss”; he insisted, instead, on being called “Bugoy.” He smoked Marlboro Lights and drank Glenfiddich whisky. Lourdes Molina Fernandez, former editor-in-chief of WE Forum, recalled that, one rainy day, when water from outside gushed into the editorial office, he took a walis-tingting himself and swept the water out the door while everyone watched.

While the mainstream press sang praises of the “new society” — “Peace and order 90% better”, “Crooks leave government office”, “Prices now much lower,” read the front page of The Times Journal on October 22, 1972—WE Forum put out articles that exposed the failures and abuses of the Marcos regime. Its journalists and their families faced harassment, intimidation, and threats. 

Armed men would pull up in front of the Burgos residence, get out, and just stand there for about 15 or 20 minutes, then leave. They got frequent telephone calls warning that every Burgos would be killed off if Joe did not stop writing against Marcos. They got used to strange men following them around wherever they went. 

In November 1982, WE Forum ran a series of articles that exposed the fraudulence of Marcos’s war medals. During a speech, Marcos took a copy of the paper, showed it to the crowd and waved it about, then said he would make the publisher eat it.

A few weeks later, on December 7, 1982, military agents from Metrocom stormed the WE Forum office and conducted a raid. They bundled up the newspapers and planted evidence, according to Edita, who witnessed the raid. They seized not only papers and documents, but also the machines and equipment used for printing and distribution. 

Two years later, the Supreme Court declared the search warrant used for the raid invalid for lack of probable cause and failure to specify the particular materials to be seized. Until the decision came out, the Metrocom sequestered the publication’s printing press.

Soldiering On

Following the raid, Joe and the paper’s columnists were arrested and put in military detention. Mere days after his release, where he had suffered in solitary confinement, Joe started a second newspaper, Ang Pahayagang Malaya. Joker Arroyo, one of his lawyers, advised him to hold off while WE Forum was sequestered and the sedition case against him was pending in court, but he was undeterred: “If I can’t do journalism, I’m useless. It’s the only thing I know.” 

On August 21, 1983, Joe himself was at the Manila International Airport to cover the arrival of Ninoy Aquino for Malaya. He saw Ninoy get assassinated on the tarmac, then he wrote the article and took the pictures that would appear in Malaya the next day.

What prompted Joe Burgos — who at the time was already a father of four, his eldest eight years old, his youngest only three — to give up his peaceful life and start a publication despite the risks? He had been asked these questions many times, and always, he answered something along the lines of, “Nobody was doing it, and I had to do it.” 

Joe Burgos was not given to grandiose delusions of saving the country or singlehandedly toppling a dictator. What propelled him was the simple imperative of duty — he was a journalist, and his duty as a journalist was to publish the truth. Since so few at the time chose to go down that road, he had to do it. “That was how simple it was for my father,” said J.L.

Here was a man who only did what he was supposed to do, yet possibly ended up helping set off the series of events that culminated in the EDSA Revolution. Teresa Aquino-Oreta, Ninoy’s sister, once said that the EDSA Revolution would not have happened “without Joe and his publications in the frontline.”

Apart from his invaluable contribution to our democracy, he had an outsize influence on his children, who, like him, are not afraid to fight; Jonas, his third-born, was an activist who was abducted by six military men in 2006 and has never been seen since.

In 1987, after the euphoria of EDSA and amid the excitement over a nascent democracy, Joe sold Malaya and used the proceeds to buy a farm in San Miguel, Bulacan. He retreated from the political limelight and lived as a farmer for the rest of his life. Right when he could finally write whatever he wanted to write without fear of retribution, he hung up his pen. For him, he had already done his job, and that was enough. 

He still wrote — he was a writer at heart and had been writing since college — running a column on farming in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. A tireless advocate, Joe fought for environmental justice in his late years. In 2003, he died of complications due to cancer at 62, and his remains were laid at his farm in San Miguel, where former co-workers, journalists, and students flocked— while Frank Sinatra and Gary Granada played in the background— to pay tribute to a man who fought when no one else would. ●

This article was first published on August 3, 2020.