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As Canadian journalists were celebrating the freeing of their colleague Amanda Lindhout from captivity in Somalia this week, their relief and joy were tempered by the fact that on Monday, the worst mass killing of journalists in history took place – on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Scores of people were hauled off a political campaign bus by a hundred armed men and butchered with machetes and M-16s. It’s been reported that 29 of the 57 dead were journalists who were covering the campaign of a local vice-mayor who had announced he was running for governor in the province of Maguindanao. The vice-mayor had sent his wife, two daughters and other female supporters to file his election papers because he had received death threats and believed no one would harm a busload of women. So many journalists were onboard the bus because they thought it would make a great story.

The Philippines is ostensibly a democratic country, but it is one of the most deadly countries in the world for journalists – some years, more deadly than Somalia or Iraq. This latest massacre puts the number of Filipino journalists killed on the job since 1986 at 109, according to the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. In a couple of rare cases, the actual killers of journalists have been tried and convicted. In no cases were those who ordered the killings jailed.

The facts surrounding this act of carnage shed some light on why so many Filipino journalists have been killed with impunity for so many decades.

The suspected mastermind of Monday’s mass killing, Andal Ampatuan Jr., who turned himself in to police three days later protesting his innocence, is a local mayor and son of the governor of Maguindanao, Andal Ampatuan Sr. The Ampatuan clan has been a close political ally of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Shortly after coming to power in 2001, Ms. Arroyo’s government gave the Ampatuan clan the green light to use a private militia to fight secessionist and Islamist insurgencies in Maguindanao. Since then, the relationship between the Arroyo government and the clan has been based on a balance of favours. According to The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s most respected newspaper, Mr. Ampatuan Sr. “gave Ms. Arroyo and her allies victories in the presidential election of 2004 and the senatorial contest in 2007.”

I covered the 2004 presidential election, and the killing a year later of a journalist named Marlene Garcia Esperat, who lived a few kilometres from the site of this week’s massacre. On radio and in a local newspaper, The Midland Review, Ms. Esperat had alleged that officials in the Arroyo administration had misappropriated millions in federal agricultural funds, strongly implying that those funds had been secretly diverted into the pockets of Mindanao’s top politicians during the lead-up to the 2004 election. On March 24, 2005, she was shot to death in front of her children.

For most of her career as a journalist, the 45-year-old Ms. Esperat had fought against a time-honoured political practice in the Philippines known as pasalubong-pabaon – the giving of gifts in anticipation of the receiving of gifts. Politicians distribute their wealth to local strongmen in order to get elected, then distribute government wealth in order to get re-elected. Not surprisingly, exposing this systemic corruption is a dangerous exercise, since impunity is granted to the strongmen who support their paymasters. Journalists who offend these strongmen can be murdered without consequence.

After Ms. Esperat’s killing, journalists in Manila began clamouring for information about the transfer of agricultural funds during the 2004 elections. In the midst of their investigations, one of Ms. Arroyo’s own intelligence agents leaked recordings of 15 telephone calls Ms. Arroyo had placed to the Philippines elections commissioner during the ballot counting on Mindanao. On radio and television, the country was treated to Ms. Arroyo’s deep voice and the taped calls supplied millions of Filipinos with ring tones like Ms. Arroyo’s query, “Hello Garci … will I lead by more than a million?” and the elections commissioner’s reply, “They’re doing the upward adjustment for you.”

Outrage over the tapes merged with outrage over the stories Ms. Esperat had been uncovering at the time of her death. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets calling for Ms. Arroyo’s impeachment, and articles of impeachment were filed in the House of Representatives.

A Senate committee eventually found that Ms. Esperat’s allegations about the theft of agricultural funds were true, yet no indictments for the crime of directing those funds to Ms. Arroyo’s election campaign were filed. The impeachment charges were withdrawn, and on Feb. 10, 2006, the Senate voted to end its investigation into Ms. Arroyo’s taped phone conversations without filing a report. Two weeks later, on the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, demonstrators converged on a central square in Manila calling for another “people power” revolt. Ms. Arroyo reprised the tactics of Mr. Marcos by declaring a “state of emergency” – martial law. She sent her troops into the square, dispersed the crowd and ordered raids on newspapers critical of her. A short time later, feeling secure in her rule, she rescinded the state of emergency and restored press freedom in the Philippines – such as it is. From that date until the day before Monday’s massacre, some 20 journalists were killed on the job.

Following an uproar surrounding the massacre on Mindanao, Ms. Arroyo has expelled the Ampatuan clan from her ruling party, but the Philippine press, aware of the history, is treating the rift skeptically. Friday’s front page of the Daily Inquirer bears a photo of the alleged mastermind of the massacre, and below it the caption, “STILL A FRIEND: Andal Ampatuan Jr., now in government custody, still enjoys the friendship of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.”

Meanwhile, local and international press freedom groups have expressed their outrage at the Arroyo administration. “Are Mindanao Island’s power barons more powerful than the law itself?” Reporters Without Borders asked on its website, three days after the killings.

In truth, press freedom organizations have been expressing such outrage for years, to no effect. On May 20, 2005, two Department of Agriculture officials on Mindanao were charged with masterminding the murder of Marlene Garcia Esperat, but 4^1/2 years later, they have still not been arrested.

The reality of the Philippines is that corruption, impunity and the murder of journalists who expose both are nothing out of the ordinary. Corruption may never be stamped out, but until impunity is ended, the slaughter will continue.

Terry Gould is the author of Murder Without Borders: Dying for the Story in the World's Most Dangerous Places, which has won the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression 2009 Tara Singh Hayer Press Freedom Award.