Déjà vu Over EO 511

An Arroyo order triggers alarming memories of a media clampdown
Déjà vu Over EO 511
By Hector Bryant L. Macale

Is Gloria doing an Erap by issuing Executive Order no. 511?

On March 6, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed EO 511, setting up a new communications group that would consolidate the advertising budgets of all government agencies, including heavy ad spenders Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor). The creation of a communications group sparked fears that the administration might resort to ad boycotts to weaken critical media organizations, just like what the Estrada administration tried to do to the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1999.

Under EO 511, the new communications group will “guide, integrate and supervise the public information activities, including advertisements, of all departments, bureaus, offices and agencies in the executive branch of the government, including government financial institutions (GFIs) and government-owned and/or -controlled corporations.”

The group will be headed by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, with Cerge Remonde, the government media head, and Conrado Limcaoco, director-general of the Philippine Infor-mation Agency, as members. They will work under the Office of the President.

The Palace order was issued days after Arroyo placed the country under a state of emergency last Feb. 24.

Journalists fear that EO 511 could be another veiled threat to the media, albeit with an economic twist. Jake Macasaet, Philippine Press Institute chair and Malaya publisher, said that EO 511 “is using advertising clout to rein in the media.”

Vergel Santos, who chairs the board of directors of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, points out that EO 511 would be used by the administration to gain “leverage power vis-à-vis media.” In an interview with the PJR Reports, Santos says that by way of EO 511, the government “wants the media to know that they hold this power.”

Learning from Erap
Santos likens the order with the ad boycott that happened to the Inquirer in 1999. “Essentially, that’s the idea,” he says.

In his BusinessWorld article last March 27, Santos pointed out that if Arroyo copied Marcos’s declaration of martial law with Proclamation 1017, with EO 511 she was aping “the campaign of her own predecessor, Joseph Estrada,” which not only “deprived the Inquirer of government advertising, but also enlisted advertisers friendly to Estrada, mostly movie and entertainment companies.”

On July 8, 1999, then President Estrada goaded movie producers into withdrawing their ads from the Inquirer, which he then perceived as being too critical of him. In turn, Estrada promised to grant the request of the producers for tax incentives. The producers agreed to the proposal and promptly withdrew their ads from the paper on July 10, or two days after the meeting. Govern-ment corporations also withdrew their ads shortly after.

According to the Inquirer, the boycott, which was joined by big businesses, lasted for five months, costing the paper tens of millions of pesos in lost revenues.

PJR Reports (then called the Philippine Journalism Review) in its July-September 1999 issue ran an editorial of the now-defunct AsiaWeek on Aug. 5, 1999. Com-menting on the ad boycott, AsiaWeek said, “Sorry, Mr. President, but pulling out ads is about as effective in promoting good journalism as jailing re-porters and banning newspapers. To quote the Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘economic retaliation against the media poses a grave threat to press freedom.’”

But in a press statement, Bunye explained that the present-day EO’s sole purpose was “to organize and rationalize public information programs of various government agencies in the executive branch, no more, no less.” He added that to “impute suppression of press freedom relative to this effort is far out in the left field,” and explained that the administration merely wanted to consolidate govern-ment information efforts to improve the public reach and penetration of key economic programs.”

Bunye described suspicions against EO 511 as “farfetched” and “irresponsible.”

Wait and see
Santos says that what should be raised against the EO is the issue of “unfair trade in the case of the government media com-peting against the commercial media” in a variety of levels—such as advertising, readership, and viewership.

Media controlled or financed by the government “should not compete with the private media for advertising.”

Meanwhile, Maria Ressa, chief of ABS-CBN News and ANC, prefers to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. She says that if EO 511 was intended to make government operations on information activities more efficient, then it has the right to do so. She told PJR Reports that “it would really be speculative right now to say if EO 511 is intended to intimidate the press.”

She adds, however, “But if it is meant to intimidate the media, we have to raise the alarm.”

Like Ressa, Carlos Conde, secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, finds nothing wrong with government’s streamlining of its ad budgets. He adds, however, that “if you look at the political context of the past few months it becomes telling.” He told the Inquirer: “We have a government that wants to control the flow of information.”

When asked by reporters about the timing of EO 511, which was signed two weeks after the issuance of  Presidential Proclamation 1017 (which ena-bled Arroyo to have emergency powers last month), Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said that it was “just incidental” and that there was “nothing sinister” about the consolidation of government ad budgets under the communications group.

But was it incidental, really?

Timing is everything
Even though the order was signed March 6, it was only on March 23 that the press was able to report on it. A few days before March 23 and just two days before EO 511 was supposedly signed, the anti-Arroyo The Daily Tribune celebrated its sixth anniversary. As part of its anniversary edition, the newspaper published a lampoon special where Arroyo’s face was superimposed on a woman in a bikini. The lampoon issue was reportedly in keeping with the paper’s tradition during its anniversaries.

Ermita denies that EO 511 was ordered as a result of Tribune’s lampoon edition but says the Palace was going to ask the various government agen-cies about the ad placements they made on the anniversary edition of the paper.

These agencies included the Office of the Vice President, the Land Bank of the Philippines, the Department of Agrarian Reform, and the Housing Urban Development Coordi-nation Council.

Back in 1999, PJR said the issue about the ad boycott against the Inquirer was not the withdrawal of ads per se but the timing of the withdrawal. Back then, Estrada was being challenged by the opposition and an enraged public that wanted him impeached.

Today, in the midst of another political turmoil and the government’s battle with media, the timing of EO 511 can be no less worrisome.

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