$81-Million Bank Heist: Unnecessary, Irrelevant Racial Reference

Screengrab of the March 30 front page of The Philippine STAR.

JEERS TO the Manila Bulletin, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Philippine Star for its repeated and often unnecessary and irrelevant racial reference to the suspects in the money laundering scandal implicating the a branch manager of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) and businessmen involved in casino operations.

The issue has drawn public attention because of the huge amount — $81 million — stolen by hackers from the central bank of Bangladesh last February. The hearing by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on the bank heist and the involvement of RCBC began on March 15.

The media have been reporting developments on the case, most especially focusing on the Senate hearings during which individuals of Chinese descent were implicated in the scandal.

Some reports in the Bulletin, the Inquirer and Star used the term “Chinese,” “Filipino-Chinese” and “Sino” in identifying the suspects in the bank heist. These terms also appeared in the headlines (Inquirer: “$30M in cash delivered to Chinese high roller,” March 13; “AMLC sues 2 Sino traders,” March 23; and “Kim Wong names 2 Chinese who brought $81M to PH,” March 29; Bulletin: “Chinese man named in Bangladesh cyber heist to ‘answer everything’—lawyer,” March 24; “Two Chinese traders brought to PH $81M in stolen funds, Senate told,” March 30; and the Star: “Kim Wong tags 2 Chinese in $81-M heist,” March 30).

Not only is the repeated identification of the suspects by race irrelevant and unnecessary — it also reinforces existing racial stereotypes that the Philippine Journalists’ Code of Ethics and similar codes of ethics in other countries urge journalists to avoid.

In the Philippine setting, racial, gender, ethnic, religious and other stereotypes only help to widen existing divisions and to foster mutual distrust. Religious and ethnic stereotyping, for example, was evident in the media reporting of the 2015 Mamasapano incident and its aftermath, and helped make the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law problematic, in graphic illustration of the dangers of stereotyping. In the present case, the persistent reference to the racial origins of some of the individuals suspected of participation in the heist does not help the public make sense of what happened. What they do instead is cloud the issue while reinforcing existing biases.