ABSTRACT

In May 2016, the Filipino people elected its new President, Rodrigo Roa Duterte. One of

Duterte's immediate action was to continue the peace talks with the Communist Party of the

Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP) that

the previous administration of Benigno Aquino III terminated to focus on the Moro insurgency. To

express his willingness to engage in the peace talks, President Duterte appointed three Cabinet

secretaries endorsed by the NDFP and proclaimed himself as the first “socialist President” of the

country. Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the NDFP, also expressed his delight to continue

the peace talks with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). However, on May 2017,

the peace talks were canceled because of what GRP calls “insincerity” on the part of the CPP-NPA-

NDFP while Sison noted the timing of the Marawi crisis and the declaration of Martial Law in

Mindanao affected the peace talks.

This study explored the media coverage of the peace talks between the CPP-NPA-NDFP and

GRP during the Aquino and Duterte administrations (2010 – 2017) by tackling how the legal and armed

battles were angled, what the significant progresses and setbacks were, and what the media covered

during the given time frame. The researcher gathered articles from the websites of the three major

broadsheets: The Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star, and Manila Bulletin and used the

Propaganda Model of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky as a framework to analyze how the news

organizations covered the peace talks.

The findings included the narrative pattern of the peace talks, the treatment, tone, and

prominence of the three major broadsheets, and the Propaganda Model's application to the news stories

of the CPP-NPA-NDFP peace talks.