The price of (limited) success

EVERY PHILIPPINE President since Marcos has been critical of the press and has demanded that it behave in a manner acceptable to government. Marcos’ main complaint, as it was that of Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and now of Benigno S. Aquino III, was the press’ alleged focus on “bad news“.

But Marcos went even further: he claimed that his bad press was the result of a conspiracy between the Left, and certain news media organizations controlled by the oligarchs of Philippine society, whom he blamed for the relentless press criticism of his regime prior to his declaration of martial law in 1972. One of his first acts during the first days of  martial rule was to shut down media organizations and to have journalists arrested. Throughout the period of dictatorship, journalists continued to be arrested for writing articles critical of the regime.

When she succeeded Marcos in 1986, Corazon Aquino seemed to have expected a favorable press throughout her six-year term. Disappointed, she tried to make an example of the late columnist Luis Beltran’s unfortunate and baseless comment that she “hid under the bed” during a coup attempt in 1989, and sued him and his editors for libel.

Fidel Ramos tried a different tack: he invited critical journalists to breakfast or lunch in the hope of changing their minds about his administration. As for Joseph Estrada, he chose what he thought was the more effective path of attacking the media, and where it mattered most: their revenues and their owners’ tax problems.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was as systematic as Marcos. She unleashed a number of initiatives against the media which included surveillance of critical journalists, threats of sedition charges, and her husband’s use of criminal libel to intimidate and silence journalists. Mrs. Arroyo paid constant lip service to press freedom, but her indifference to the killing of journalists, which she tried to cloak by organizing task force after task force, encouraged further killings, which, one suspects, she secretly applauded.

Although Mr. Aquino has so far limited himself to criticism of the press, like Mrs. Arroyo he has also been indifferent to the killings that persist under his administration. Not only has he expressed support for a right of reply (ROR) bill. He also very quickly signed into law the Data Privacy Act and the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, both of which have a bearing on the press’ access to information and to free expression. Although he promised support for a freedom of information (FOI) bill during the 2010 Presidential campaign, he has since reneged on that promise.

Mr. Aquino’s hostility to the news media—more specifically to the way rank and file journalists have been reporting on his government as well as himself—cannot but have a demonstration effect on the rest of his administration and the agencies and officials of government. Thus have  Congressmen of the Republic been encouraged to express the same and even worse complaints against the news media in their refusal to consider the decriminalization of libel or to abandon their stubborn demand for a right of reply rider in any FOI bill before the House of Representatives. Some governors and mayors have similarly been emboldened not only into criticizing media, but even into taking such actions against practitioners as banning journalists from press conferences, threatening them with physical violence, or filing libel complaints against them. The worst assault on journalists have been the killings, which are continuing despite the worldwide outrage generated by the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan town massacre, and the change in administration in 2010.

Why this persistent and stubborn hostility against the press on the part of those in power as well as those in their employ (the killers of journalists have included police and military men as well as local thugs in the pay of local officials, businessmen, and criminal syndicates)?

While the killing of  journalists is encouraged by the culture of impunity—the State failure to identify, arrest, try and punish both the killers as well as the masterminds in the killing of journalists, political activists, environmentalists, human rights defenders, clergymen, and women, and even reformist local officials—the even more fundamental reason for the hostility of the powerful and influential towards the news media, which constitutes the context in which the killing of journalists is continuing, is apparently their perceived success in discharging the basic duty of providing the public the information and analysis it needs.

This is occurring despite the many problems that confront the media and press community,  which include, among others, low salaries and non-existent benefits, conflicts of interest, and corruption. Although these problems have often resulted in incomplete, biased, and unfair news reporting, apparently there has been, since the early1970s, enough of the truth in news media reports to disturb the powerful.

In the community press where 97 percent of the killings have taken place, some reportage has been relevant, fair, and accurate enough to provoke such reactions as the inclusion of offending journalists in military Orders of Battle, the use of death threats and physical assaults to intimidate them, and shootings as the final solution to the persistence of journalists in exposing official wrongdoing at the local level. Apparently some journalists are doing something right, regardless.