MANILA, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot
dead a radio journalist outside his home in the Philippines on
Tuesday, police said, four years after the broadcaster survived
a near-identical assassination attempt.
Virgilio Maganes, 62, based in the province of Pangasinan,
northwest of Manila, was shot six times and died at the scene,
they said in a statement.
The Presidential Task Force on Media Security described the
killing as "an act of cowardice" and vowed to hunt down those
responsible.
Maganes had survived the previous attempt on his life in
November 2016 by playing dead.
"We demand that the authorities work fast to solve his
death, which could be related to the botched attempt on his
life," the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines
(NUJP) said in a statement.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said both his murder and
the 2016 attack would be investigated to establish whether they
were linked to his work as a journalist.
Despite its reputation for having one of Asia's most liberal
media scenes, the Philippines is one of the world's most deadly
countries for journalists, with at least 190 killed in the past
35 years. Provincial broadcasters are among those most targeted.
President Rodrigo Duterte made creating the media security
task force a priority on taking office in 2016, but his critics
say press freedom has deteriorated on his watch.
They point to his verbal tirades and lawsuits against news
organisations and his failure to condemn online trolling and
threats against media made by his diehard supporters.
The Duterte administration denies targeting media for its
reporting.