Here are excerpts from the first-person account of a survivor in the bus hostage-taking incident at Quirino Grandstand in Manila, Philippines.
Lee Ying-chuen was one of 25 Hong Kong tourists aboard the Hong Tai bus that was taken hostage by Rolando Mendoza. Her story of their ordeal inside the bus was published last week in the Chinese newspaper Ming Pao Daily News.
(Video, Transcript) Radio interview with Manila bus hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza
The role that media played is now at the center of the investigation of the Manila bus hostage-taking last August 23. The main question: Is the media partly to blame for the hostage-taker’s rampage that killed nine Chinese tourists from Hong Kong?
We all saw how the media scrambled to outdo each other on that fateful day. One local Philippine radio station — Radyo Mo Nationwide (RMN) — successfully managed to interview Rolando Mendoza minutes prior to the killings.
Listen to the radio interview and decide whether the media contributed to the tragic ending of this hostage incident.