BENIGNO. I'm Teodoro C. Benigno. I am a columnist of the Philippine Star. I've been writing that column for 11 years since 1989. It is a column that I think has succeeded in getting quite a big audience. We've been receiving letters, and it is a column I suppose that is fit or rather tailored for the educated class because I utilize English of a , shall we say, that has elegance, that has eloquence, that has passion, that is calibrated, you see, to address the heart and mind and sometimes the stomach. So when you read my column you feel all kinds of emotion.

CHAN & BELGIRA. Could you describe to us the circumstances that led to your involvement in journalism?

A. Well, that's a long story. I mean, ever since I was a kid, I was very much in love, you see, with language. I would write literature and poetry, but I never imagined that I would ever go to journalism. My father had already set up his mind that I would become a lawyer, so when I graduated from high school, I entered college before the war, first year before the war, I enrolled at UP, first year pre-law studies. War came, Pearl Harbor, comes as a matter of fact, my world out of existence. And after that, since I was too young at that time to become a soldier and join the war against the Japanese Imperial Army, eventually we evacuated to Pangasinan and Ilocos Norte, where I joined the guerillas in 1944, if I'm not mistaken. So I was almost two years in the guerillas, I fought in the battle of Besang Pass. That was the greatest battle that was fought by the guerillas against the Japanese. Besang Pass was defended very, very ferociously by the Japanese, headed by General Tomoyuke Yamashita. If you remembered the name of Yamashita was always identified as the one who hoarded a lot of treasures, a lot of gold, a lot of riches. From the guerillas I went back to Manila, found my family, and I went back to my studies again this time at the University of Santo Tomas, Pre-law, and then College of Law. It was while I was in my second year there was an opportunity, as a matter of fact, for me to work as a cub reporter in the post-war Manila Tribune, I think that was in 1949, if I'm not mistaken. So I took the opportunity, I laid aside my law studies and eventually became bitten by the newspaper bug and I never left journalism since then.

Q. So you were a cub reporter?
A. Yes

Q. What was it like to be a cub reporter? What did you do exactly?
A. Well, as a cub reporter, you know, you're a cub, and you're a cub precisely because you hardly know anything about the coverage of events. So you're a little, little, little, little animal in journalism learning how to take you steps. And with the guidance of my elders in the post-war Manila Tribune, I eventually became a full-fledged reporter and covered the customs, the waterfront, police especially, and sometimes Malacanang.

Q. Sir do you remember your first editor?
A. My first editor was Vicente Albano Pacis. Vicente Albano Pacis was one of the greatest journalists, pre war. He was the editor of the pre-war Philippines Herald, if I was not mistaken, and was lauded as one of the best writers of his generation. Eventually he became an ambassador to Switzerland, I think, upon the termination of his journalistic career. So he was quite, a , shall I say, a veteran journalist and a very learned, um, shall I call him, intellectual.

Q. So in other words, did he serve as a sort of inspiration to you as a journalist? Or was it just coincidence?
A. Well, his editorials for example, I found them very well-written, very elegant, and touching on subjects with a kind of clarity that I felt I couldn't begin.

Q. So how much, could you say, did your earn during those times when you were still a cub reporter?
A. Nothing! I was just given transportation. Money and sometimes money for mails, but actually my mother was giving me money so I could sustain myself as a cub reporter.

Q. Did you work with anyone memorable aside from your editor? Did you have peers that you could not forget?
A. Yes. I worked with Teodoro F. Valencia. He was the senior reporter of the Manila Tribune at that time, and there were also, what you might call others, like Zacharias Nugid, Velasyo Pecechian…but I don't think their names would mean anything to you.

Q. Well, after you worked there, for that newspaper, what newspaper did you work for next?
A. Well, I worked for the Philippines Herald. I wrote as a sports editor for the Philippines Herald.

Q. So what was it like being a sports editor for the Philippines Herald?
A. Being a sports editor for the Philippines Herald was entering a field of journalism that was quite different from any other field, because sports is action, sports is dazzling speed, sports is an exercise of muscle with brains. You have boxing, you have basketball, you have swimming, you have wrestling you have shooting, almost everything that you felt was moving in a spectacular way. So we are covering a piece, that enabled you to practice a different kind of language. The depiction of what was happening in the world of sports, were sometimes, sports was what you call it, inhuman and barbaric-like sports, like exactly boxing and wrestling. Professional boxing is for the gladiators, pitted each other to destroy or be destroyed.

Q. So as a sports reporter, you earned money or were not paid at all?
A. Well, I was already a regular reporter, I mean my cub reporter days were over.

Q. So where was the headquarters of this newspaper?
A. The headquarters of the Philippines Herald, was at the old DMHM building in Intramuros.

Q. In Intramuros?
A. Yes.

Q. Do you still remember your editor at the Philippines Herald?
A. Philippines Herald? My editor was a person by the name of Jose Lansanin and those who were editors of the desk were Felix Bautista, and who else, I think Zacharias Nugid was also there, others I don't remember very well anymore. They don't come vividly to mind anymore.

Q. So would you describe your editors to be strict of lenient with your work?
A. Oh yes, of course they were strict because we were working , you see, for the old generation of journalists who demanded not only precision in your writing but that your facts , as a matter of fact, you can collaborate, but whatever your gather as facts, you check and countercheck with other people to be sure. You see that you have both sides of the event; you have both sides of the picture.

Q. So was it true as well for the first newspaper you worked for, in strictness?
A. Yes. They were all very strict in those days. Sometimes very, very strict. You have deadlines. You gave your copy to what you might call desk man and copy writer who were very strict in editing your copy. So what I did, you see, was to get to write a duplicate of what I was writing to find out how I was being corrected. I studied the corrected copy and pretty soon I was not being edited anymore.

Q. Sir do you still remember the physical facilities, the machinery that you used in the olden times?
A. Well, in those old days, we were using old typewriters: Corona, and I do not know the names, and Betty, and Underwood, if I'm not mistaken. And they were all very, very noisy and the moment your struck the keys of the typewriter, the thing would be clackety-clacking all over the place. There are 3 or 4 or 5 of you who are writing your stories, so there was some kind of a hubbub of the typewriting machines making a lot of noise.

Q. So after working for the Philippines Herald, what did you do next?
A. After working for the Philippine Star?

Q. Philippines Herald.
A. Philippines Herald…

Q. Where did you work next?
A. Well, I worked, you see, for the Agence France Presse.

Q. So who hired you, who personally discovered you as the potential Agence France Presse reporter.
A. …heard I joined a secret organization and that I became a member of the communist party.

Q. Can you give a brief overview of what your did in the AFP?
A. Well, in the Agence France Presse, I was a foreign correspondent, I covered major events in the Philippines and political events. I was very often assigned to Malacanang. I wrote about the… what was I writing about then? It was certainly, it was certainly what your might call, pre-Martial Law years that I worked in the Agence France Presse, and I also covered sports and I first learned, you see, how to write analytical dispatches. We get to analyze the political situation, the economic situation. I took my first leap, you see, in economic writing. I learned what GNP was, what GDP was, what current account was, what trade balance was and so on and so forth. In a news agency like the Agence France Presse, which has an international audience, you learn to write in a broad front, and it really, really. Really sharpens your journalistic instincts because, first of all, you have to write fast. You're competing with news agencies, you're competing Associated Press, you're competing with United Press International, you're competing with Reuters and in that you have to move very fast, very fast, because when your late 5 minutes, its like being late 5 hours. Once we started reaching your subscribers, like the New York Times, like the Mainichi in Tokyo, or the Lounde in Paris. Now they're subscribing to all these news services, if your story's ahead AP, UPI, Reuters, they pull out their stories so AFP still gets stories first. So you learn to write fast.

Q. Where was the headquarters of AFT? Where did you work?
A. Well, eventually they had quarters of AFP here in Manila. It was in the VIP Building on Roxas Boulevard right in front of the US Embassy, so it was a very strategically located building and became more strategic when President Marcos declared Martial Law.

Q. So would you say that the pay in AFP was better than the pay before?
A. Oh yes, much, much better. It was a blessing in disguises, because you were being paid the salary of a foreign correspondent.

Q. Do you still remember how you got to be Bureau Chief? What did you do exactly?
A. How I got to be bureau chief? Oh yes I remember how I got to be bureau chief. I rose in the ranks and then I became assistant bureau chief. As assistant bureau chief, I was assigned to cover the Olympic games in Rome in 1960, and I was in a group of Agence France Presse journalists so that all speak in French, and my knowledge in French was absolutely zero, zilch, and for the first time I had an inferiority complex because I couldn't talk French. Nevertheless, I was assigned to cover the Olympic Games to write in English. I was the English reporter, the others were writing French, so because of the embarrassment of I could not talk in French, I met a lot of the senior officers of the Agence France Presse and they said: "Teddy, they spoke English very well. If you want to become bureau chief of the Agence France Presse, you better learn French." So I went back to Manila and one of the first things I did was to join the Alliance Française. Alliance Française was then located at the corner of Libertad and Harrison; and I fell in love with the language. I became a junkie. It's like taking drugs. Every morning that I woke up, I would look at my French books, my homework. I would talk to the wall. And so, I had four years of that while working full time at the Agence France Presse. Those four years, I topped every year and as a matter of fact, I became class valedictorian. And thus automatically being the class valedictorian, I earned a scholarship to study in Paris for graduate studies in the French language and French literature at the Alliance Française in Paris. I suppose it was my passion for the language that again enabled me to shine in our class. I finished the one year course, as on eof the five to top the graduating class. I was slow to leave Paris. I fell in love with Paris. (The) romance was such that when I went back to Manila, all I thought about was going back to Paris.

Q. So was this love of the French language that got you the position of bureau chief, or did it contribute…?
A. Well, it did open a lot of doors, opened a lot of windows, opened a lot of opportunities. When you're a Filipino, and you can speak French eloquently and a lot of people start knowing: " Hey, magaling pala si Teddy sa ganito, 'ta mo?" then I started to teach French. So it was a, what you might call, an added dimension to what, to my prominence as a journalist already at that time. I was being called the "French connection" already. O yes of course, then eventually of course in 1964, I was promoted to the state of the bureau chief.

Q. …and after…How long did you work in the AFP?
A. Thirty… almost thirty six years.

Q. Could you describe the years during the Martial Law rule?
A. Years during the Martial Law…

Q. Could you give us a summary of what happened…
A. the years of Martial Law, fell on me, as I said in my first interview with you, like a clank of chains. I felt that I was being committed. And the first thing that fell on my mind was the national anthem, and I sang it silently, and I sang it in sorrow because I felt that this Martial Law took away my freedoms as a Filipino, but since I was working in a foreign news agency, I did not lose my freedoms. Those who were working for the Manila times, Times Journal, or the other newspapers, they all became as a matter of fact vassals in the Martial rule. We in the news agencies in the Agence France Presse maintained our integrity.

Q. So after you worked for the AFT, where did you go next?
A. After I worked for the AFP, it was not after, but when I was working for the AFP, I think I told you that earlier, I had a tremendous advantage and opportunity of knowing a man by the name of Benigno Aquino. He was then a minor politician. He was I think a vice mayor to Concepcion, then he rose to become vice governor, he rose to become governor. It was when he was a governor, you see, that Marcos began to notice him and Marcos accused Ninoy Aquino of fraternizing with the communist, the New People's Army, and Ninoy loved it because he came into public prominence because of the accusations against him. And so Ninoy went for senator and won. Won as the youngest senator ever voted to office in the senate. Ninoy was probably, at that time and later on, a political genius of sorts. His mind, you see, was an oyster full of mother pearls and mother pearls that were gleaming and all white as a matter of fact, never exposed to the sun. He was sharp, he was intelligent, very well read. He had a rapier for a mouth. He could argue with the best of them and people were afraid to argue with him. And eventually, you know what happened. Martial Law was declared and Ninoy was arrested. So my friendship with Ninoy seemed to have a, what you might call, a very deep-set influence in my life as a journalist. We became very good friends and after my studies in Paris, he was already a senator and he invited me to join his "brain trust". I mean, I would have to resign from the Agence France Presse, and since he said : " Your are the first Filipino to have a masters in political science in the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, I think I will make you my CPR." CPR means Carlos P. Romulo. He was offering me, if ever he became elected, the position of secretary of foreign affairs. Never happened. Never happened. He was arrested, dashed all of his hopes to become president of the Philippines in 1973. Martial Law was there already. He was imprisoned in Fort Bonifacio in solitary.

Q. You described to us earlier the FOCAP. Could you tell us once again how FOCAP came to be?
A. Since Martial Law had been declared, and the Philippines was living in an atmosphere of fear and trepidation. We in the foreign press began to feel it also because we were being censored. Kit Tatad, who was the, you see, Information Minister, had the temerity as a matter of fact, to censor me, when he was just my cub reporter before. And as I told you earlier, I god outraged and I said: "This cannot happen. We have to group together. We have to unite, to complain the censorship" and eventually the censorship was lifted. As the censorship was lifted, I made moves to organize the foreign correspondence into a single and unified organization, which we eventually called Foreign Correspondence Association of the Philippines, and it's still alive until today.

Q. So after which you became press secretary, for Cory?
A. Yes, because in 1986, I got a call from Joker Arroyo. He was then executive secretary of Cory and Joker told me: " Teddy, gusto ka makita ni Cory. She wants you to become the information (minister), well, the press secretary." She did not like, simply like Kit Tatad anymore, I mean they were really side line. And I told you that I spent four days with the presidential family in Jolo, Leyte, where they tried everything to seduce me into leaving the Agence France Presse, and enter in the government. Of course I was flattered and I was tempted. My vanity, you see, was what you might call, rising to the surface. Eventually, my sobriety took over myself and I declined, and I continued my work as bureau chief of the Agence France Presse, until as I said, Cory Aquino offered me the job. And because I was a very close friend of Ninoy, and because I felt that the times called for it, I felt that the country was in need of a new breed of public officials who were honest, who had integrity, I resigned, I retired from the Agence France Presse. It's a very big mistake I made. Entering the government is like entering a snake pit. And from the first day I was inside, I regretted that I retired from the Agence France Presse, but I took it. So many times I resigned verbally and Cory Aquino always saying " Magtiis ka, lahat tayo nagtitiis." So I continued to work despite the fact that there was a cordon sanitaire around her, who would block, many times that I tried to see Cory, and they would say the nastiest things against me, invent a lot of fictitious things, that I was sleeping with my female secretaries in Malacanang. Eventually, when I couldn't take it anymore, I resigned in the month of April 1989, 1989. After resigning, as I told you earlier, or even before I resigned, I called up Max Soliven, and I told him confidentially in French, so that no one could understand us, that I was leaving the government and that I was thinking of moving over to the Philippine Star. Max was very, very enthusiastic and exuberant about the whole thing and said that "it was a done deal, but lets just wait for Betty Go-Belmonte," who was actually the majority stick holder and the president of the Philippine Star, to give me the go sign. And it didn't take long for betty to give me the go sign. In fact, Betty was the one who took care of me once I entered the Philippine Star, and removed me from Max Soliven, and I became one of her favorites. And she told me that I had increased the circulation, my column, increased the circulation of the Star by 1/3. " That column," she said, " your column startled me, it increased our circulation, the Philippine Star" Of course we got increases and more increases and more increases. Don't ask me how much!

Q. So that's why you say you're the highest paid journalist in the Philippines?
A. Yes, I know how much the others are earning. (meaning the highest paid columnist,not the highest paid journalist in the Philippines)

Q. So, could you describe to us your writing style?
A. I write in a way that puts a lot of passion in what I do everyday. I write a column that fills up a whole page, and I write in a way that makes the English language robust, marches, leaps, dances, goes into a ballet, goes into a wrestling match. That's the kind of prose, like that, that I use I use a lot of metaphor and alliteration. But the advantage that I have is that compared to many more writers, global writers, I have a lot of information in my head. That's why that's my big advantage.

Q. So how would you describe working for the Philippine Star, before?
A. I find it enjoyable, I find it fulfilling, I find it more apropos, because I'm writing for a Filipino audience, where before I was writing for a foreign audience. And I get to have Filipinos to appreciate some of my foreign audience overseas. So the impact is direct in a sense that people stop you on the streets and "Teddy Benigno? O yeah, good writer!" You can imagine how things like that lift up your spirits, and encourage you, and somehow you feel its worth it for all the dangers that you see. People as a matter of fact think of you as a danger, to the powers that being that they'll remove you, they'll frighten you, they want you to stop writing, they want you to leave the country, they want you to go into exile and so on and so forth. They'll frighten your family. .All these things have the effect of making you feel I have a mission. Luckily, at the age of 77, I have not lost my gifts as a writer and I hope I can continue to write for 3, 4 , 20 years, the way I'm writing now.

Q. Could you compare briefly the working conditions today and your previous years as a journalist?
A. Working conditions today…

Q. Would you consider it better or worse?
A. Its very different now, firstly, I'm no longer working a beat. I don't cover Malacanang, I don't cover foreign affairs, I don't cover defense department. It's very rare that I go out to cover events. I go to rallies. I attend some press conferences. I have reached an age where I don't have to cover events anymore. So my work is very much, what you might call, confined in the house. I converse with the books in my library, I converse with the maidens of mythology, I converse with them. And it is more intellectual than others often do. But the challenge is for each intellectual, is clothing, to wrap it up in words that are alive, in words, you see that click at your eye, in words that cut at your skin, in words that a matter of fact, so that, you know, empassions the reader, that's what makes a difference between..

Q. Would you just state final words or advice for future would-be journalist?
A. Future would-be journalists? I suppose the advice that I could give, is it's a long hard rocky road uphill for them to become successful columnists, overnight. They have to work at it, they have to read, read, read and devour a lot of books. Now, journalists are lazy, they watch TV, they go into internet. I think the art of reading should not be lost. I think that great books are still there to be read, great books of philosophy, great books of literature, great books in social science. They have to be open, very open, so that the journalist would eventually become, mostly become columnists. They'll become immersed in the kind of knowledge that a columnist, well the religious columnist writes with the right audience at the right requirements. Another piece of advice is, work like a slave, work like a demon, work for more as a matter of fact, sometimes I , there'll be days when I would not sleep at all. During the four days of EDSA, I hardly got any sleep. We were like somnambulists in the office, going in and out of the office. Somehow, even in spite of the take we felt a certain energy, we felt a certain light inside us. We felt we were consumed you see by a kind of, how do call this, a kind of rapport, that was what was happening. EDSA was the four days that shook the world. EDSA was the four days that defined the Philippines as the first country to launch a people power revolution without any violence. So that's the feeling. There are great events and when you touch these great events you will feel uplifted and you realize you are doing great journalism. Martial Law was a challenge. You need a lot of great journalism in Martial Law , you need a lot of great journalism in EDSA. And now, because of Erap Estrada we are doing a lot of good and great journalism. Because of these crises, incredible crises, you're faced with it. What else can I advice? Read everything you can read. From comics to the Bible, I'm telling you this, it will help you.