Persecution Of The Press Is The New Normal In Bongbong’s Philippines – Analysis

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:06:06 +0000
World

By Danilo Araña Arao

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places to practice journalism not just in Asia, but in the entire world. Members of the media are often smeared as communists, arbitrarily detained or murdered for doing their jobs. Worse, this behaviour is normalised by large swathes of society despite a constitutional right to a free press.

Close to 200 journalists have been killed in the line of duty since the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr was ousted in 1986 — four of them under the current administration of his son Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been detained since 2020 on trumped-up charges of illegal possession of firearms and financing terrorist activities. Toward the end of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s term, the government blocked over two dozen websites, including the publications Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly over alleged links to terrorism.

During Duterte’s term from 2016 to 2022, the major broadcaster ABS-CBN was shut down and popular online news site Rappler faced several legal cases, including tax evasion charges and registration cancellation that threatened its business operations. Duterte also banned a Rappler journalist from entering the Malacanan presidential palace. The former president’s penchant for sexist comments and sexual assault encouraged others to behave this way toward female journalists. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict established in 2018did not spare journalists, media workers and news media organisations from claims that Filipinos in these industries were part of a communist conspiracy, a practice known in the Philippines as ‘red-tagging’. The entire AlterMidya organisation, a network of alternative news media organisations known for grassroots reporting and critical analysis, has been repeatedly red-tagged and many of its members face regular harassment and intimidation.

This situation has not changed under Marcos Jr. Journalist Percy Lapid was killed near his house after being accused of being a communist. Dozens of websites remain blocked, and Frenchie Mae Cumpio continues to languish in jail even as the call for her release has gone international.

A culture of impunity remains entrenched in the Philippine press as the rich and powerful circumvent the law. Unsolved killings of journalists have resulted in the Philippines being perennially listed in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Global Impunity Index for 16 consecutive years. Reporters Without Borders puts the Philippines at 134 out of 180 countries in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index and stresses that although the Marcos Jr administration may be ‘amiable’ toward the press, the ongoing media attacks are ‘still worrisome’.

For its part, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines has criticised Marcos Jr for his failure to protect and uphold press freedom.

While the current administration claims to be transparent, Marcos Jr is largely inaccessible to the media and rarely entertains media queries. His actions suggest he does not place much value in freedom of information, given the lack of access offered to the president. Amnesty International has observed no progress in human rights under the Marcos Jr regime, nor have United Nations human rights officials. Such perceptions in the international sphere further amplify the impunity that affects Philippine society in general and the media in particular.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said that there is little difference between Duterte and Marcos Jr in regard to human rights violations. Human rights group Karapatan documented 89 victims of extra-judicial killings and 13 cases of enforced disappearances from July 2022 to December 2023, among other empirical data painting a bleak picture.

It does not help that Marcos Jr engages in disinformation, particularly historical denialism. He shows no remorse for what happened during his father’s dictatorship or denies the worst of it even existed. While there are news media organisations that are standing up to the current president, the Philippine news media have become mostly docile and compliant. The chilling effect is clear. Members of the media understand that if they push too hard they will wind up abused, imprisoned or even killed. Most in the industry want to avoid being the next victim.

Certain media owners are either related to the Marcoses or are capitalists with diverse business interests, preferring to be on the good side of the government. They have for all intents and purposes become enablers of the regime’s media repression campaign.

The Philippines must reject the normalisation of media repression. For those still fighting, the goal now is defending the constitutional right to press freedom and ending Marcos Jr’s culture of impunity.

· About the author: Danilo Araña Arao is Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism, the University of the Philippines Diliman, Special Lecturer at the Department of Journalism, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines Santa Mesa, Associate Editor at Bulatlat, Columnist at Pinoy Weekly, and Editor at Media Asia.
· Source: This article was published at East Asia Forum