Reporting “Drug War” Deaths: Numbers Are Meaningless Without Analysis

IT HAS been three years since the Duterte regime’s “war on drugs” was implemented.  Thousands of suspected drug users and pushers have been reported killed. But the exact number of these deaths has yet to be established, as government figures and those of human rights groups continue to clash.

Unfortunately, the Philippine National Police’s (PNP)  own record of fatalities related to or resulting from the government campaign has been marred by inconsistencies, shifting in the use of terms, re-classifying huge numbers of those killed initially, as vigilante killings, then deaths under investigation (DUIs), and later as homicide cases under investigation (HCUIs) which lumps drug-related cases and non drug-related cases together.

It has not helped that the PNP has not been able to provide information on the results of their investigation of cases. Sadly, the media have turned away from reporting on continued killings resulting from police operations even as the number of cases has risen.  (See “Media on War on Drugs – A Study of the Media Coverage of the Duterte Administration’s Campaign Against Illegal Drugs”). 

In a June 18 command conference at Camp Crame, the PNP said 6,600 drug suspects were killed in anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016 to May 31 this year – 1,225 more from their current data of 5,375 as of March 2019. But PNP Spokesperson Col. Bernard Banac said the numbers are not yet official and have yet to be cross-checked with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and other affiliated agencies for consolidation. 

Perhaps noting that these figures may be subject to change, only a few news organizations reported this development. Those that did only repeated the information relayed to them by the PNP, including the updated death toll, the number of drug-cleared barangays, of anti-illegal drug operations conducted, and of suspects arrested or surrendered. 

However, an ABS-CBN News report provided some context by recalling the disparity between the PNP’s official figures and the numbers presented by human rights groups, and the complaints against President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court for alleged mass murders and human rights violations in connection with his “drug war.” 

None of the reports bothered to question the point of releasing unofficial numbers. No reporter asked whether the increase was drawn from old cases which have been investigated to show that the death was a result of a police operation. There were no efforts to follow up on these issues after the announcement. 

The media’s lukewarm reception to the announcement is understandable. 

But the media have failed massively to rise to the challenge hurled at them by the PNP’s spin-driven approach to releasing data, unable to undertake their independent tracking of numbers from PNP’s social cards available on their website.

Media have not analyzed PNP data to show how close the total count of human rights groups is to the total number of drug-related deaths in police records. Journalists have not pressed the PNP to release the findings on DUIs or HCUIs as these now total thousands of dead.  

The media’s failure to go back and parse the drug war data has enabled the authorities to make free use of whatever data they have to support such claims that the anti-drug campaign is a resounding success, or that, as President Duterte has declared, the campaign has to be “as relentless and chilling” as it began. It doesn’t help that media reports merely follow the police lead instead of doing its own analysis of available data.  

Simply citing the numbers released by the police is to serve blindly as a vehicle of government. Citing the conflicting numbers coming from different sources without explaining why these are different desensitizes the public to the gravity of humanitarian crises and adds to public confusion.

Clearly, the media must do more and better as Duterte himself has admitted that the narcotics issue has “worsened” despite the administration’s bloody “war on drugs.” Their lapses are a disservice to the public, especially to those communities and families victimized by misguided policy.