In the Philippines, free press won’t go down without a fight

Freedom of press is guaranteed by the Philippines’ Constitution. Yet the island nation has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to exercise that right.

Journalists endured verbal abuse, online attacks, libel charges, and physical harassment for years under the strongman rule of Rodrigo Duterte. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines reports that at least 23 journalists have been killed since 2016, and many expect the new administration will be worse. 

Both President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the famous dictator, and Vice President Sarah Duterte, daughter of Mr. Duterte, come from political families that are openly hostile toward journalists. It remains to be seen whether they will build on their parents’ legacies of cracking down on press freedom, but the past few weeks haven’t been encouraging. A few days after Mr. Marcos assumed the presidency on June 30, the Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa for cyber libel, marking the latest in a series of blows to the acclaimed journalist and her embattled publication Rappler. She now faces nearly seven years in prison.

It’s one thing to enshrine a freedom in the constitution – it’s another to ensure that freedom in practice. In courts and newsrooms across the country, journalists are fighting for their right to work freely. Still, experts worry about how the press would fare under six more years of persecution, and the impact this all has on Philippine democracy.

Danilo Arao, an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, says the magnitude of harassment and intimidation is producing a “chilling effect” and hinders the Philippine press from “performing the highest normative standards of journalism.” 

“If this continues, you’ll end up with docile and servile people who favor political power, rather than adversarial journalists,” he says.

Defending press freedom in court

Ms. Ressa, who is also a U.S. citizen, is facing seven active cases before the Philippine courts, all filed during the time of Mr. Duterte. 

She says she hasn’t given up “hope that these next six years will be slightly better,” because the Marcoses “are more sophisticated [than the Dutertes] in some ways.” But she’s ready to fight if things get worse. Despite losing her recent appeal against the cyber libel conviction, Ms. Ressa’s legal team considers the ruling an opportunity for the Supreme Court to examine the constitutionality of cyber libel and the continuing criminalization of libel. 

In a statement, Ms. Ressa’s lawyer Amal Clooney said she hopes the high court will “restore the country’s constitutional commitment to freedom of speech. And I hope that the new Marcos administration will show the world that it is strong enough to withstand scrutiny and allow a free press.”

Ms. Ressa says the string of cases against Rappler and the onslaught of attacks against the Philippine media aimed to “make us voluntarily stay quiet, to voluntarily give up our rights.” 

“We’re not going to do that in Rappler. I’ve said this repeatedly over the last six years – and apparently, for another six years: We’re not going to go away,” she says.

Alternative news site Bulatlat.com, one of 27 websites that were blocked by the National Telecommunications Commission during Mr. Duterte’s final weeks in office, has also brought the battle to the courts.

“The memorandum order clearly violates our constitutional freedoms of the press, speech, and expression,” says Ronalyn Olea, managing editor of Bulatlat.com. “It does not just constitute censorship; it also deprived us of due process of law.” 

The site is still blocked, but Ms. Olea hopes the court will rule “in favor of press freedom and the public’s right to information” at a preliminary injunction set for Aug. 2.

In peril: public’s right to know

News organizations in the Philippines face a plethora of threats that make it difficult to deliver information to the public. Several outlets including CNN Philippines and Rappler have been targets of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, a form of internet censorship in which attackers crash a website for hours or days by flooding it with traffic. 

Last year, DDoS attacks on Bulatlat.com and Altermidya.net – another alternative news site blocked in June by the National Telecommunications Commission – were traced to an IP address assigned to the Philippine army. No one has been held accountable.

Experts say alternative and community publications, which are small and scattered in nature, are especially vulnerable to “red-tagging,” in which authorities open up specific reporters or publications to harassment by linking them to communist or rebel groups. Rhea Padilla, national coordinator of Alternative Media Network, says the government has tagged journalists “for publishing stories that depict the people’s struggle and stimulate critical public discourse.”

Jonathan de Santos, president of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, calls these attacks “a disservice to the Filipino people.”

“They want people to become blinded followers,” he says.

Search for solidarity

Over the past six years, there is a growing solidarity among journalists amid the intensifying attack on press freedom. Mr. de Santos says many individual journalists, especially the young ones, “are setting aside competition to strengthen the fight against disinformation and confront all kinds of attacks on press freedom.” 

“However, we still have to translate this kind of solidarity among newsrooms and media organizations. We need to push back as one industry,” he says. 

For Ms. Ressa, winning the war against media repression requires winning the trust and confidence of the Filipino public, who shaped the foundation of press freedom in the country. 

When Ferdinand Marcos Sr. imposed martial law in 1972, he immediately ordered the military to seize major media outlets’ assets. The closure of trusted news outlets and murder of adversarial journalists eventually gave birth to the “mosquito press,” a collective name for alternative publications that criticized the dictatorship. They were said to be “small, but have a stinging bite.” Later, the 1986 People Power Revolt that ousted the senior Mr. Marcos also helped restore press freedom, enshrining the right in the 1987 constitution. It’s a history that Ms. Ressa hopes Filipino people will remember going into this new era.

“The point is, if only one stands up, it’s easy to slap them down. But if a thousand stand up, then it becomes harder. So it’s not just journalists you have to turn to. It is also Filipinos,” she says. “This is a time when we have to stand up for our rights.”