We are 50 years old!

THIS issue marks a milestone for the Sunday PUNCH. Yes, your newspaper is now 50 years old, or 50 years young relative to its target life of 100 years and beyond.

In 1956, our late founder-editor Ermin E. Garcia stated in no unmistakable terms the policy and the very foundation on which the publication of the Sunday PUNCH would be anchored on for as long it continued to be published.

We take this occasion, therefore, to ask you, our loyal readers, to decide for yourselves how your Sunday PUNCH has fared all these years, after 50 years. We are aware and we are committed to the principle that the newspaper is a public trust, and therefore, it’s your privilege to pass judgment.

In 1956, The PUNCH stated that it would “seek to play a dual role: namely, as a medium of news information and as a forum of public opinion. The second prescinds from the first.  In other words, it will stimulate public thinking on the basis of objective news reports.”

“This publication is politically independent, in the sense that no politician or political group has been or will ever be allowed to be in a position to unduly influence its policies or color its news stories or its editorial columns.”

“We shall often write on and about politicians. But never shall we write for any of them or in behalf of any partisan political cause.”

“We shall not deprive any religious group or access to our pages whether for information or opinion.”

“We reject the idea of a knight-in-shining armor crusade. But where the truth is concerned, we shall be ruthlessly uncompromising. It may lose us friends or potential income, but all that must be written off as part of the calculated risks of honest and virile journalism. It is not a whimsy that we have adopted the Socratic philosophy: “No man is to be reverenced more than the truth.”

       We respectfully submit ourselves to your judgment as we, the editors and staff, renew our commitment to uphold the same policy and philosophy in the next decades in order that the next generation of Pangasinenses may understand and appreciate what took place and how the province molded itself over the years.

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