Quianne Patrice P.

Tuaño
11- HUMSS SIX

KILLING OF JOURNALISTS AND THE SUPPRESSION OF PRESS

FREEDOM

The Philippines is a democratically run country. It has a unitary government with a

president who is directly chosen by the national voter every six years and is not eligible for re-
election. A parliamentary system Congress with a structure identical to that of the United States
has legislative authority. The Senate, which has 24 senators, and the House of Representatives,
which has 219 members, are the two chambers. Senators are chosen at large, with no specific
district or constituency in mind. The Supreme Court is in charge of the judiciary, which is highly
developed. The Philippines' media is frequently praised as having the most freedom in Asia. The
Philippines' long legacy of support for free expression and an independent media, according to
mainstream academic opinion, may be traced back to the American colonial government. The
Malolos Constitution of the First Philippine Republic (1899) continued a dedication to free
expression, the right to knowledge, and press freedom, which the leaders of both the 19th century
Philippine Reform Movement and the 1896 Revolution were familiar with. The Malolos
Constitution's provisions were not only preserved but were significantly enhanced in the
country's future constitutions. However, the actual condition of free speech in the Philippines
indicates that the existence of both liberal legislation and a liberal tradition is no guarantee of
complete freedom of expression. Freedom of expression and journalistic freedom have been
questioned under many regimes.

Assassination of journalists is currently one of the most pressing challenges of free speech
in the Philippines, a problem that has persisted since 1986. Ironically, the Marcos dictatorship
was toppled in this year by the first "People Power" movement, which was successful in part
because citizens and the press stretched the boundaries of freedom beyond existing laws. Local
politicians and police officers loyal to them have been named as suspects in the murders of
several notable journalists, and the deaths have been seen as a retaliation to the slain journalists'
media criticism of local government leaders. The present emphasis on establishing anti-terrorism
legislation is another recent challenge to freedom of expression. Anti-terrorism is a loosely
defined term used by government security personnel to justify the restriction of free speech in the
form of withholding licenses for public protests and veiled threats against lawful left-wing
organizations. What's alarming is that neither the general population nor the media have
expressed any concern about the erosion of freedom of expression. Self-censorship and
government control of the media have created an atmosphere in which most Filipinos are unable
to obtain trustworthy, accurate information on important problems.

To the Philippine Government and Parliament:

 Take all necessary steps to combat the culture of impunity and prosecute those who have
used violence against journalists and activists.
 Amend the constitution to permit foreign investment in the media industry.
 Transform the Philippine Broadcasting Service and the National Broadcasting Network
into genuine public service broadcasters.
 Create a broadcasting policy for the Philippines based on public input, and draft
broadcasting laws in accordance with international standards. The legislation should, in
particular:
• Ensure that licensing procedures are completely open and equitable.
• Clearly express the broadcast regulator's independence;
• Ensure that the regulator is actually independent of political and commercial forces by
establishing suitable financing, membership, and appointment procedures.
• Establish explicit restrictions to minimize the concentration of ownership;
and
• Include explicit measures for promoting diversity in broadcasting, such as the issuance of a set
number of licenses for community broadcasting and provisions for minority language
programming.
 Replace the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) and the
Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB) with a new independent entity that adheres to
worldwide film and video classification standards.
 Amend the penal code to:
• Repeal criminal defamation provisions;
• Bring the provisions relating to national security and public order in line with international
standards.
 Develop civil defamation provisions in line with international standards.
 Adopt and execute an information access legislation that fully complies with international
norms in this sector, and establish an independent agency, such as an information
commissioner, to supervise its implementation.
 Ensure that all counter-terrorism measures, including new laws, are completely compliant
with international human rights norms.
 Protect and guarantee the freedom of assembly.

To the Media and Civil Society:

 Campaign for the repeal of the MTRCB and VRB statutes and the establishment of other
institutions in their place.
 Campaign for the construction of a high-quality broadcasting law, including the
establishment of an independent regulatory agency to regulate TV and radio broadcasts.
 Encourage public knowledge of and participation in enhancing the professional and
ethical standards of the mainstream media through media literacy programs.
 Bring together media advocacy and support groups to push for the punishment of all
those guilty for the murders of journalists.
 Support programs for ongoing media education that aim to improve professional and
ethical understanding and compliance.
 Improve and increase coverage on areas outside the capital, and on marginalized people
and areas.
  Increase public and media awareness of the anti-terrorist law's human rights implications,
and advocate for bill modifications that will really address the terrorism problem without
jeopardizing civil liberties and free speech.
 Through a continuous public and media awareness campaign, encourage public and
media support for the passage of the access to information law.

The restoration of pre-1972 liberal institutions, aided in part by the media's strength, has not
stopped journalists from being killed. According to press freedom reports, 55 journalists have
been killed since the restoration of democracy in the late 1980s. According to the International
Federation of Journalists, the Philippines is the most hazardous area for journalists to operate in
2004, after Iraq. Following the People Power Revolution in 1986, there has been a major
increase in coverage of environmental and women's concerns, science and technology, civil
society, and many other topics that were previously neglected or just partially covered. Prior to
the proclamation of martial law in 1972, there was only sporadic coverage of environmental
concerns, little coverage of human rights, and no mention of women's and gender issues.

In June 2021, a court in Manila found Maria Ressa, the CEO of the news website Rappler, and
Reynaldo Santos Jr., a former Rappler researcher, guilty of cyber libel. In this example, the new
legislation was applied retroactively to an article that had been published years before.

The lawsuit is one of numerous that Ressa and Rappler are facing as part of the government's
retaliatory campaign against news organizations for reporting on the "drug war" and the Duterte
presidency. Since 2016, the president and his followers have threatened and harassed Ressa and
Rappler on social media, including sexist comments. The Philippine Congress, in which Duterte
has a big majority, voted in July not to extend the franchise of ABS-CBN, the country's largest
television network, to another year. ABS-CBN was shut down as a result of the vote. Duterte and
his officials chastised ABS-CBN, accusing the network of bias since it frequently questioned the
government's "war on drugs."

The assassination of radio broadcaster and internet commenter Jobert Bercasio on September 14
followed the trend of journalists being killed. Bercasio was the 189th journalist assassinated in
the Philippines since democracy was restored in 1986, and the 17th during Duterte's stint in
government. Two of the masterminds and several dozen collaborators for the 2009 Maguindanao
Massacre, in which a local ruling family massacred 58 people, including 32 journalists covering
a political campaign, were found guilty by a Manila court in December 2019. Nearly 80 suspects,
on the other hand, are still on the loose, with little chance of being arrested.

The Philippines' rural is particularly vulnerable to free speech, as it is in these provinces

that the central government is weakest and the urban media is least prominent. To the
disadvantage of human rights in general, and free speech and free press in particular, a lethal mix
of semi-autonomous local warlords and police and military personnel in collusion with them has
resulted in the murder of not just journalists but also political activists. The media in the
Philippines has a number of issues, including the lack of professionalism among some media
personnel, the politicization of the media, a lack of pluralism, and hate speech. These are
inextricably tied to other issues, such as attacks on and assassinations of journalists. After 1986,
journalists were more conscious that previously underreported and unreported issues were
critical to comprehending developments in the country, and they began to pay more attention to
them. Filipinos had a warped impression of what was going on with such concerns as a result of
this negligence. One of the great triumphs in the Philippine media's history during the last 15
years is the attention they currently receive from the media.