Decency po, decency.
Some people are fond of displaying just about anything that suggests status. For some journalists, it’s anything that has the word PRESS in it.
A press ID, a vest with the word “press” embossed in it car with the word “press” painted in it: these things have become not just a means to identify one’s profession. They have been used with arrogance and for projecting some symbolic violence.
I agree with my ethics professor when she pointed out that anything with the word "press" confers a kind of leverage to a journalist, “a way of getting around with the law, of avoiding regulations that ordinary mortals should obey”, like being ticketed for speed driving.
To demonstrate how this happens, let me share (an adaptation of) a story my friend told me. Journalist X, an editor of a daily(who happens to be her parents' friend) was driving along when got pissed with a jeepney that stopped awhile before her, perhaps because he was alighting passengers. She went on to cut the jeepney.
My friend’s mother asked Journalist X, “Ba’t mo naman ginawa yun?”
She answered with words to this effect: “Well, I got pissed! And there’s a press sign in my car, anyway. Baka siya pa’ng matakot.”
The jeepney remained still. Then Journalist X stopped her car, went back at the driver and scolded him. Journalist X even threatened the already aggrieved driver that she will file a complaint to the LTFRB. She is, after all, a journalist, someone perceived to be more credible than that driver or maybe any other "mortal".
What could that incident be but a lamentable example of using the profession as a license to abuse, a breach of a journalist’s role to serve and not to be served, and a gross disobedience of a responsibility to maintain the dignity of the profession that makes him/her. The PPI code of ethics has it: decency shall be a journalist’s watchword.
Another thing: decent journalists do not display their IDs on their rear-view mirrors. Nor they have the word press painted in their cars.