Eugenia Apostol | |
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| Born | Eugenia Duran Apostol (1925-09-29)September 29, 1925 (age 100) |
| Awards | Ramon Magsaysay Award |
Eugenia "Eggie"Apostol (born September 29, 1925) is a Filipino publisher who played pivotal roles in the peaceful overthrow of two Philippine presidents:Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 andJoseph Estrada in 2001. She was awarded the 2006Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature & Creative Communication Arts.[1]
Apostol was born on September 29, 1925, the second child and second daughter among eight children of Fernando Ballesteros Duran, a doctor and member of the National Assembly, and Vicenta Obsum.[2] In 1936, when her father was re-elected to the National Assembly, the family moved to Manila, where Apostol attended Holy Ghost College (nowCollege of the Holy Spirit), where she finished elementary school as valedictorian in 1938. With the Japanese occupation of Manila in 1944, the family returned to Sorsogon. While poking through the ruins of their home after the battle for liberation, 18-year-old Apostol was injured by shrapnel when an unspent bazooka shell exploded. Apostol graduated magna cum laude at theUniversity of Santo Tomas with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Letters in 1949. She wrote a column forCommonweal, a national Catholic weekly and copy for Philippine Manufacturing Company (now Procter & Gamble). She married Jose "Peping" Apostol on February 18, 1950.[2]
In 1950 Apostol becamewomen's section editor ofThe Sentinel, a national news weekly, which succeededCommonweal in 1949 as a publication of the Archdiocese of Manila. The ultraconservative Archbishop of Manila became unhappy over liberal views expressed inThe Sentinel, at a time when the Church was defensive overcriticism from some social sectors about the complicity of the Church in the unjust power structures of Philippine society. The church authorities were not too pleased as well when the employees ofThe Sentinel organized a union with Apostol as the union's vice-president. Apostol criticized the archbishop's ban on ballet classes and performances in Catholic schools as well as a controversy triggered by the presence of Russian ballet teachers at St Scholastica's, a convent school. This was the era of the "Red Scare". Apostol resigned.[3]
In 1954 Apostol became women's section editor and associate editor ofSunday Times magazine, the supplement of the country's leading daily,The Manila Times. She stayed with theTimes for ten years (1954–64), working with both the magazine and the newspaper. She found light work in handling, as editor and writer, the traditional women's beat of home, fashion, food, and human-interest features, and had a knack for infusing something lively, fresh, and innovative into what would otherwise be "canned" and conventional.[3] In 1964 Apostol moved to theManila Chronicle as editor of its new Sunday supplementWoman and Home.Woman and Home was phased out in 1969 but Apostol stayed on with theChronicle as editor of its expandedBetter Living section.[3]
Apostol claims that it was because her husband was the defence secretary's favourite engineer that she was allowed to launch a woman's magazine at a time whenFerdinand Marcos was closing down many publications, allowing only pro-government titles to operate. The magazine's publishers, former executives of theManila Chronicle, sought Apostol's aid in gaining the intercession of Defence SecretaryJuan Ponce Enrile for the approval of their application to publish. Apostol became editor of theWoman's Home Companion, the first Martial Law women's magazine in the Philippines.[4] Apostol quitWoman's Home Companion in 1975 to launchMr & Ms magazine. Amongst her shareholders wasChristina Ponce Enrile wife of the Defence SecretaryJuan Ponce Enrile. The magazine struggled for some years before it broke even due, Apostol says, to a crowded women's magazine market.[4]
Apostol published a series ofMr & Ms supplements authored byNick Joaquin - re-tellings of Philippine legends and mythology which were later bound asPop Stories for Groovy Kids, recognized as an important contribution to the history of children's fiction in the Philippines.[2][5]
During the dictatorship ofFerdinand Marcos, Apostol used the variety magazine as a platform to air anti-government views, publishing articles that would otherwise be banned in less independent media.[6] In December 1982 the National Intelligence Bureau summoned eight women journalists including Apostol for interrogation at an army camp[7] - described by outright "intimidation" byCeres Doyo, one of the women interrogated.[8] When opposition leaderBenigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated, Apostol launched a weekly supplement toMr & Ms devoted entirely to anti-Marcos politics,Mr & Ms Special Edition.
These examples were contained in the National Press Club publicationThe Philippine Press Under Siege Volume II[9]
On August 21, 1983, opposition leaderBenigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated upon his arrival from exile in the United States. Though the funeral drew over two million people, it was ignored by the media. In a recorded interview, Apostol described her reaction: "Next day, I said: 'What's this? Not a single photo of the funeral in the papers, as if nothing happened.' What really got me was the Times Journal - owned byBenjamin Romualdez, brother of Mrs.Imelda Marcos. What they printed was the photo of the spectator who was hit by lightning — that was their top news!"[10]
ATime magazine article that hailed Apostol as an Asian hero, described what she did next: "Apostol fumed. Within days she was printing a tabloid version of her glossy Mr. & Ms. called Mr & Ms Special Edition. It had 16 pages of photographs showing Aquino's body, the multitudes that came to view it, and the massive funeral parade that wound through the streets of Manila for almost 12 hours. The first run was some half a million copies, yet it could not satisfy demand. In the coming months, as momentum built for the People Power revolution that would topple Marcos three years later, Apostol turned the tabloid into a weekly endeavor, putting it out from a raggedy office that, for security reasons, did not even have the publication's name on the door."[11]
Apostol had instructed her staff to put out a special report on Aquino in the September 2, 1983, issue ofMr & Ms as well as a "special edition" sixteen-page supplement about the funeral. The supplement sold 750,000 copies and had a significant impact in arousing public anger at the dictatorship.[2] She launched the weeklyMr & Ms Special Edition, with journalistLetty Jimenez Magsanoc as editor. The special edition's masthead declared its commitment to "justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of the Aquino assassination".[12] The public response to the forty-page, black-and-white weekly was described as "phenomenal". Sales rose from two hundred thousand to half-a-million copies, numbers unprecedented in the country. The appearance of the publication was a high moment in the campaign against the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.Ferdinand Marcos was toppled by a popular uprising known as thePeople Power Revolution in 1986.[2]
In February 1985 the trial of the military personnel accused in the Aquino murder commenced, conducted by the Sandiganbayan, a special court for officers of the state. Apostol launched thePhilippine Inquirer, a tabloid-size weekly, on February 4, 1985, with herself as publisher and editor-in-chief and a staff of only two writers - JP Fenix and Candy Quimpo (nowCandy Gourlay).[2][13] Initially focused on the trial, it slowly acquired all the elements of a regular paper. Its final issue came out on December 2, 1985, after the Sandiganbayan handed down its controversial decision acquitting the accused.
When PresidentFerdinand Marcos announced in November 1985 that a snap presidential election would be held in February 1986, Apostol saw it as an opportunity for a "concerted anti-dictatorship campaign". Apostol invited some of the country's biggest mass-media publishers to breakfast in her home. The group included:
Apostol's goal was to persuade the group to launch a single daily newspaper in time for the election but the group was largely unenthusiastic. Undeterred, Apostol pushed ahead with a seed capital of a million pesos from the profits ofMr & Ms, using the printworks of Betty Go-Belmonte's family. Apostol originally envisioned a cooperative-owned newspaper but the pressure of events led to thePhilippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) being registered as a corporation, with the stipulation that only permanent employees could own stocks in the paper. Apostol headed thePDI as chair of the board of management with Betty Go-Belmonte as vice-chair.
The newspaper started with a staff of forty in a hundredsquare-meter office and a circulation of thirty thousand copies limited largely to Metro Manila. Aided by the high excitement surrounding the election campaign,PDI's growth was dramatic. Its circulation quickly ballooned to a peak of half-a-million copies daily. In just three months after its appearance, it became the leading Philippine broadsheet, accounting for 22.3 percent of the Metro Manila market, making it the country's number one daily in terms of circulation. Demand was so great that production had to be done by five different printers in separate locations in the city.
Marcos dismissed theInquirer and other opposition papers as the "mosquito press". Military plans to arrest opposition figures after a Marcos victory were leaked to the press. Apostol's name was at the top of the list. Later, Apostol dismissed the threat, saying, "It was alphabetical."[2]Juan Ponce Enrile filed suit against Apostol, alleging that she had diverted funds fromMr & Ms to establish theInquirer. The suit referred to the use ofMr & Ms money to capitalizePDI. Apostol contended that the loan had been paid back. The case was dismissed in 1994 but continued until the Supreme Court finally ruled in Apostol's favor in 1998.[2]
In the 1990s thePhilippine Daily Inquirer underwent a struggle for power - between Apostol and her managers. Apostol severed all corporate and editorial ties with thePhilippine Daily Inquirer on January 26, 1994, resigning from the board and retiring from the paper. She is said to have seen the battle for corporate control to be detrimental to the paper's growth.[2]
On January 9, 1996, Apostol founded the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (later renamed as Eggie Apostol Foundation in 2012),[14] a non-profit organization based inPasig with the aim to improve facilities and teaching in Philippine public schools, publish books and produce videodocumentaries aboutmartial law under Ferdinand Marcos, theassassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. and thePeople Power Revolution titledDuet for EDSA (1996),Batas Militar (1997),Dead Aim: How Marcos Ambushed Philippine Democracy (1997),Lakas Sambayanan: People Power (2002),EDSA 1986: Mga Tinig ng Himagsikan (2006) andBeyond Conspiracy: 25 Years After the Aquino's Assassination (2008). During the presidency ofFidel Ramos, moves were made to revise the Philippine Constitution to extend the presidential term of office. Apostol published a sixteen-page, tabloid-size satirical weekly calledHu! Ha!, to oppose charter change and expose regressive political practices. The weekly covered the 1998 elections and ran from September 20, 1997, to May 16, 1998.
When PresidentJoseph Estrada called for an advertising boycott of thePhilippine Daily Inquirer and suedManila Times over a corruption story, Apostol set up thePinoy Times. Apostol designed it as a popular tabloid for the masses, written in everyday Filipino it attempted to deliver "quality journalism with the price, size and liveliness of a tabloid". From an initial run of 30,000 copies, its regular five-days-a-week edition rose to a circulation of 170,000 in just eighteen months. Its weekend Special Edition sold as many as half-a-million copies. The paper was met with bomb threats, hate mail, and libel suits from Estrada supporters, who at one point published an imitation tabloid in an attempt to undermine thePinoy Times. A popular uprising - known asPeople Power II - forced Estrada out of power in 2001. Estrada's departure sent the sales ofPinoy Times into a slump. The paper closed on December 21, 2001, after two years in circulation.[15]
In the November 2006 issue ofTime magazine (international edition), Apostol andLetty Jimenez Magsanoc were cited thus: "Apostol, now 81, and Magsanoc, in her mid-60s, were not firebrands in their younger days. Both were veterans of the lipstick beat, writing for the lifestyle sections of newspapers. But the assassination of Aquino, which sparked [thePeople Power Revolution], galvanized Apostol and Magsanoc to break the local media's complicit silence surrounding Marcos' oppressive rule. In late 1985 they phased outMr. & Ms. Special Edition and launched thePhilippine Daily Inquirer, trailblazing a brand of hard-hitting, mischievous, in-your-face reporting that tested the limits of a dictator's tolerance and helped Filipinos win their freedom. 'In three months,' says Apostol, 'the Inquirer had not only helped to oust Marcos, it was also making money.' Today, the Inquirer is the country's largest newspaper and, while sometimes criticized forsensationalism, it has been unflinching in its coverage of government and the Philippines' uneasy transition to democracy."[11] Apostol was awarded theRamon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature & Creative Communication Arts in 2006 in recognition of "her courageous example in placing the truth-telling press at the center of the struggle for democratic rights and better government in the Philippines".[16]
