PHILIPPINES: Filipino columnist Pablo Hernandez packs an Ingram machine pistol - and says he used it to good effect when gunmen tried to make him the latest victim in a wave of media murders in the Southeast Asian country.
"It's getting worse," Mr Hernandez said yesterday, a day after he traded shots with two men on a motorcycle when he and a friend noticed his car was being followed in Manila.
"This government is not sincere in arresting the masterminds because their concentration is only on the hired killers."
The Philippines prides itself on having the freest press in the region but media groups have criticised the government for failing to halt the attacks, many of them apparently related to reporting on corrupt officials and business deals.
No one has been convicted over the murders of nearly 70 journalists since democracy was restored in 1986 with the overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, raising suspicion that members of the police and military are sometimes complicit.
Five journalists have died this year.
The Philippines was the most murderous country in the world for media, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said recently, with 18 killings since January 2000. It was followed by war-torn Iraq, Colombia, Russia and Bangladesh.
Mr Hernandez, a columnist for the tabloid newspaper Bulgar, said he has had a licensed gun since 1999, when he began to get death threats over his stories about smugglers and crooked police officers.
Some reporters have long carried weapons in areas where insurgencies by Muslim and communist rebels are strongest, and private armies controlled by local officials are rife.
"Almost all journalists in the provinces have guns," said one photographer who asked not to be identified.