On the evening of 20 September 1972, Chibu Lagman filed what would be his last news report for Channel 5 television in Manila. Lagman, now living in the United States, recalled in an interview that that final story was an account of an aborted ambush of Philippine Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. Lagman said his report portrayed the ambush attempt as a staged event, intended by the government to make people think there were subversive plots to assassinate government leaders and overthrow the regime of President Marcos. The next day, 21 September 1972, President Marcos declared martial law and closed down all the print and broadcast facilities in the Philippines. In so doing, Mr Marcos charged that lawless elements, their cadres, fellow-travellers, friends, sympathizers and supporters were using the mass media to disseminate deliberately slanted and overly exaggerated news stories and news commentaries as well as false, vile, foul and scurrilous statements, utterances, writings and pictures. Chibu Lagman says that his report on the ambush was among those used by the authorities as examples of anti-government reporting. The declaration of martial law was a watershed for press freedom in the Philippines. Another one came in 1983 after the assassination of former Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. The dynamics of government-media relations in the Philippines ranges from a time less than fifteen years ago when the Filipino press was considered one of the freest in the world, to recently when it was denounced as one of the most repressed, and to the present time when there is a resurgence of popular anti-government publications. Such a colourful scenario provides an interesting illustration of the effect of authoritarian controls on news media. Philippine press freedom was modelled after the constitutional provisions of the American colonialists. The Philippine Constitution still contains a Bill of Rights in which it is stated that no law shall be passed abridging freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievances. The Philippines had a long reputation for having the freest press in Asia. A 1966 study by Ralph L. Lowenstein for the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri categorized the Philippine media system among the most free in the world. In the 1960s, the Philippine Government was enacting or seriously considering legislation designed to protect journalists' sources of 34