PH journalism’s Wonder Woman in the time of dictatorship

MANILA, Philippines — It was a time of supermen and superwomen, and super staff, all coming in and out of the Mr. & Ms. magazine newsroom and the office of the late Eugenia D. Apostol, its publisher and editor in chief.

That was after former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was assassinated at Manila International Airport on Aug. 21, 1983. Apostol, or EDA as we used to call her, was the woman behind the glossy weekly family magazine that had turned political, becoming critical of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., his wife Imelda, and their regime.

The magazine’s modest office in Mandaluyong City on Edsa got crowded, with many industry heavyweights and politician-critics of the administration arriving to see and listen to her, day after day. The magazine was smaller in circulation compared to Bulletin Today’s Sunday magazine Panorama, but it pricked Marcos no end that he later called it part of the “mosquito press.” 

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On the distaff side, there was columnist Letty Jimenez Magsanoc (“Letter from Letty”), who would later become the editor of the magazine’s black-and-white edition. There were also Ninez Cacho Olivarez, Doris Nuyda, Cherie Querol, Lita Logarta, Belinda Olivares-Cunanan, Doreen Fernandez, Sophia Romero, and many more whose names escape us now. 

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On the testosterone side were Nick Joaquin, Salvador P. Lopez, Louie Beltran, Teodoro Locsin Sr., Adrian Cristobal, Pete Lacaba, Rene Saguisag, Kit Tatad, Nestor Torre, and Max Soliven.

Reporting a murder

When Ninoy was killed, it was bad enough that Marcos military men were believed to have been behind the murder. Worse, the crony press wouldn’t publish a single story about it. 

All too suddenly, Apostol was the woman of the hour. Her guests all asked: What happened at the airport? Yet on the day of the assassination, while having her Sunday lunch with her husband, Jose or “Ka Peping,” she decided against joining the thousands that had gathered to welcome the former senator at the airport. She felt uneasy all throughout.

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She called the Associated Press based in Makati. Leonor Briscoe, the wife of bureau chief David Briscoe, reportedly told her the airport was in chaos, and asked her to call then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile to find out who was behind the assassination of Ninoy.

She did, and later proceeded to the Aquino residence on Times Street, Quezon City, where she found some of the best photographs of the slain senator’s family, particularly of Ninoy in his younger years. She brought the photo album to the Mr. & Ms. office. 

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The morning after, Apostol’s office was fully booked with visitors. Managing the traffic were her “Girl Friday” Erestu and all-around staff member Rebecca Vinaviles, who joined the magazine at Romero’s recommendation. Apostol hired her the moment she learned she had also graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (Philets) of the University of Santo Tomas (UST).

Apostol declared that the newsroom would publish stories of Ninoy’s murder, aghast that the establishment press had refused to carry anything about it, save for GMA 7 which slipped a crawler to announce Aquino’s death, thanks to the station’s feisty news boss, Tina Monzon-Palma.

 Attracting the heavyweights

The office phones were burning. Media industry heavyweights each wanted to write and publish a story about Ninoy in Mr. & Ms. It wasn’t easy to gather such people together in one room, much less to squeeze their pieces into one issue. Apostol became the Wonder Woman of them all, managing the stories along with their writers’ idiosyncrasies.

They would all provide her enough material to launch another weekly, the Mr. & Ms. Special Edition for Justice and National Reconciliation. Apostol said SP Lopez, a retired diplomat; Joaquin, national artist for literature in 1974; and Marcos detainee Soliven had mastery of the English language.

Soliven wrote “kilometric” pieces, always poignant and heavy with background. Lopez, a regular columnist, always got the prime page. Magsanoc called him an “idol in freedom fighting.”

She also said that reading the pieces of Cristobal, once upon a time a Marcos speechwriter, was “orgasmic.”

But in putting to bed the very first issue of the special edition, Apostol became the star of the show—fearless yet joyful.

The black-and-white magazine, with ink stains and all, sold like hotcakes to a public hungry for news of the Aquino assassination. It offered a voice to the opposition, which had long been denied a platform. It offered hope against hope that the countdown to the end to the dictatorship had begun, owing to the rising political temperature. 

There was always the fear that the military would step in and put a stop to it all, but the bigger problem for Apostol was accommodating all the stories.

No. 1 on hit list

These were all beautifully written pieces, so what else could younger staffers like us add to the lineup? Apostol asked us once: What do you want to write? My heart was beating fast: Perhaps we could interview the embalmer, I said. She gave us her dimpled smile.

We saw some of the heavyweights in the newsroom more often, checking on their pieces. All throughout, Apostol remained cool and in her element, directing the coverage and the lineup of stories per issue, which easily became a “collector’s item” not only for the prose and style of the writers but also for the magazine’s thorough reporting and defiant stance. The bylines said it all. 

A Marcos critic once said the Philippines was sitting on top of a social volcano. That volcano erupted and unleashed its fury in the pages of the magazine. Talk of the mighty pen of the mighty newsmen. 

Apostol always showed grace under pressure. Magsanoc would address her as “Tita Eggie” in deference to the woman older and better than all of us. On many occasions, she would lead the Mr. & Ms. staff in moving the contributed manuscripts to a safer working space for fear of a military raid.

We would learn later that Apostol was No. 1 on the Marcos hit list. But she never looked scared, and always sported a happy mien. She sometimes cracked a joke to sidestep the reported threat. Why was she No. 1? “In alphabetical order kasi,” she quipped.

She was 63 when we first met her in May 1983, a few months before the Aquino assassination. In October that year, as street protests mounted over the murder, Marcos created the five-person Agrava Commission to look into the military’s involvement in the killing.

Three days before the start of the investigation, Apostol launched the “Weekly Inquirer” to chronicle the “Inquiry of the Century.” In November 1985, due to rising public and US pressure, Marcos announced he would hold a snap presidential election in February the following year to seek a fresh mandate.

Defying the dictatorship

In response, Apostol led a team of journalists, young and old, in launching the Philippine Daily Inquirer, its maiden issue hitting the streets on Dec. 9, 1985. The rest is history.

Here was Apostol—a journalism magna cum laude from UST, a society page editor all her young life, a glossy family magazine publisher in her 60s—defying the dictatorship by publishing all the stories it wanted to suppress.

Until Aquino’s murder, Apostol loved describing herself as a journalist covering lifestyle and women’s issues—or what she called the “lipstick beat.” That alone already made hers an illustrious media career that began with a Catholic publication, the Sentinel, shortly after she graduated from college in 1949.

She said goodbye to all that when the crony press refused to publish a single story against the dictatorship. Practically overnight, she inspired and assembled some of the country’s finest writers and reporters, eventually changing the landscape of Philippine journalism. 

Talk of moral courage—proof that freedom is not given freely but fought for.

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For that, Apostol was the Wonder Woman of Philippine journalism in a time of dictatorship. In 2006, along with Magsanoc and former President Corazon Aquino, EDA was named among Time Magazine’s Asian Heroes for their role in helping restore Philippine democracy. /cb