A Philippine radio broadcaster from the central island of Negros, Cornelio Pepino, age 48, was shot dead last week.
Known to his listeners as Rex Cornelio, he was riding home on a bike with his wife after presenting his show Pokpokin Mo Baby! (Hit it baby!) on dc when two unidentified gunmen on a bike shot him from close range. He died on the spot.
Pepino also had a solid reputation as an investigative reporter and was a known critic of corruption in local government in Negros. He had also criticised the distribution of allegedly overpriced food packs to communities affected by the coronavirus lockdown.
He had exposed several cases of corruption, bribery and illegal mining. Negros Oriental governor Roel Degamo sued him for defamation in 2014, but he was finally acquitted in 2017.
He is the third media worker to be killed in Dumaguete City since 2018 and the 16th nationwide since President Rodrigo Duterte came to office in June 2016.
Dindo Generoso, a radio commentator who criticised a popular local form of gambling and the associated corruption was shot eight times last November. The other was Edmund Sestoso, who was shot in May 2018.
His killing came on the same day which also saw the closure of the country’s largest broadcasting network, ABS-CBN.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) urged the government to investigate the murder immediately, saying: “We demand justice for Cornelio Pepino, aka Rex Cornelio, and will continue to hold this government accountable for every death that remains unsolved.”
The Philippines is one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists, with at least 186 media professionals killed since the country's return to democracy in 1986.
Last October, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked the Philippines fifth on its Global Impunity Index, which gauges the record of countries in prosecuting murderers of journalists.
The country is ranked 136th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, two places lower than in 2019.