Journalism in the time of Duterte

CEBU CITY, PHILIPPINES — The claim used to be that this archipelagic Southeast Asian nation has the freest media in Asia. Under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, this now faces serious challenge.

Last Nov. 9, 2018, in the Philippine capital of Manila, Duterte’s powerful Department of Justice indicted Maria Ressa, former CNN bureau chief for the Philippines and Indonesia, for “willful attempt to evade or defeat tax” and “willful failure to supply correct and accurate (tax) information.”

“It’s a government running after its critics after it finds any dirt or appearance of dirt against them,” said Ian Vincent Manticajon, a former reporter turned lawyer and communications professor of the University of the Philippines and now newspaper columnist, to describe the indictment.

“A government ‘just enforcing tax laws’ would not hesitate to run after all tax evaders especially the big ones,” Manticajon added, referencing bigger companies widely reported to have been ducking tax for years and will likely be escaping further liability following a tax amnesty bill that the Philippine Senate approved last Nov. 21.

Charged with Ressa were her accountant, Noel Baladiang, and Rappler Holdings Corp., parent company of rappler.com.

“I am now labeled a criminal and can go to prison for 10 years,” Ressa explained the impact of the indictment to journalists who attended the 2018 International Press Freedom Awards (IPFA) in New York City last Nov. 20.

Critic

Ressa co-founded rappler.com — a news site described by the Committee to Protect Journalists as “renowned for tis critical coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial policies and actions” — in 2012. She leads it to this day.

In July last year, it published a series on Duterte’s drug war, which Ressa described to the IPFA attendees as already having “killed thousands to the tens of thousands.” She was there to receive the 2018 Gwen Ifill Award for Press Freedom for her work with Rappler.

In what Duterte’s camp denies was a response, the government’s regulator for all corporate entities — the Securities and Exchange Commission — revoked Rappler’s incorporation papers last January, effectively rendering it without a legal identity to perform any kind of commercial transaction.

The action followed allegations that Duterte made first public through media houses and social media and which his Solicitor General, Jose Calida, transmitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as a letter-complaint.

And when Rappler wrote in February about how President Duterte’s top aide and confidant turned senatorial hopeful, Special Assistant to the President (SAP) Bong Go, allegedly dipped his hand on a Php15.5 billion (USD292,205,250.00) military contract to acquire a warship and combat management system, its reporter assigned to Malacañang Palace, Pia Ranada, got banned.

Calida himself has been the subject of many a Rappler story, the latest being how a security company he owns bagged Php357.3 million (USD6,824,002.65) in government contracts.

The revocation was on the basis that Rappler allegedly sold shares of stock to a foreign entity — Omidyar Network, a fund created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar — in violation of a provision in the Philippine Constitution against foreign ownership of mass media.

The criminal indictment zeroes in on the provisions of the alleged sale.

Systematic

To Ressa and other observers, Rappler is being subjected to a systematic crackdown that follows a predictable pattern — release lies on social media to skew public discourse and then initiate a proceeding that can be ramrodded towards a desired outcome because a divided public cannot hold its government accountable.

“We at Rappler fight impunity on these two fronts: The Philippine government and Facebook, essentially our internet. Both seed violence, fear and lies that poison our democracy,” she said.

Other media houses have not been spared the arm-twisting. ABS-CBN, a giant among media networks in the Philippines, has been threatened with the non-renewal of its government-granted broadcast franchise — a practical death sentence.

The brute force tactic has, according to reporter turned lawyer, professor and columnist Manticajon, made an impact even outside the capital — a media landscape “already facing challenges on various fronts, professionally and commercially.”

“The clear message from the Duterte regime (is) that if you are effectively or consequentially critical against this government, it will dig past and present dirt against you; and if there being none, it will nevertheless perform legal acrobatics to put pressure on you or sow fear in the form of criminal indictments,” he said.

To Manticajon, the way the Philippine media covers the news in the backdrop of a Duterte government, is already “different” from the way it brought the news to the public during the previous administrations, in the sense that “media have been tiptoeing over his blunders in office.”

“Philippine media are still doing their job on exposing these but I guess the level of investigative reporting and zealousness has yet to equal or surpass coverage of previous administrations’ blunders, small or big,” he said.

“On the economy, people are definitely feeling the pinch of a slowing down economy. But the sensationalism the reporting of the airport ‘tanim bala’ scandal of the previous Aquino administration was more felt than in the kind of reporting we are having on the economy,” he added.

Surmountable

Ressa remains hopeful that the indictments will be resolved favorably, stressing that all the transactions they entered into are above board. They’ve been posting responses to the allegations raised in the indictment on their website.

For example, while the indictment said they allegedly “devised a scheme to hide its transactions as a dealer in securities,” Ressa and Rappler, Holdings Corp., through lawyer Francis Lim, said they’ve been very transparent about everything, including how they issued Philippine Depository Receipts (PDRs) to Omidyar Network and North Base Media.

PDRs are not certificates of ownership of a corporation, but represents a share that gives the buyer rights to all dividends due it. This transactions are resorted to by companies that are barred from accepting direct foreign investments.

Other media networks like GMA and ABS-CBN have reportedly also issued PDRs to foreign corporations wanting to invest in them and willing to abide by regulation of non-ownership.

Moreover, Omidyar and North Base Media donated their acquired PDRs back to Rappler earlier this year, when word of the government’s crackdown on Rappler went out internationally.

In her speech during the IPFA event, she urged the wider community of journalists to express their support, saying “silence is consent.”

“I’m being attacked not just as a journalist but as the founder of a company that successfully and legally raised money to make an idea a reality. Let my government know that you do not agree with its draconian measures and the signal it sends to investors – that the Philippines is not ready for innovation or investment,” she said.

Written originally for TheConversation.Com