Issue
Analysis No. 16
November 22, 2005
TARGET:
ALL OF THE MEDIA
The Arroyo regime’s attacks on the media, already evident
last summer, are continuing. The latest was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s
speech at the Kapisanan ng Brodkaster ng Pilipinas’ (KBP)
Top Level Management Conference last November 10. In that speech,
delivered before 200 TV and radio practitioners and executives as
well as the KBP leadership, Mrs.Arroyo urged those present to stop
covering “kangaroo courts, lynch mobs and witch-hunts.”
Mrs.Arroyo’s obvious reference was to the Citizen’s
Congress for Truth and Accountability, whose proceedings had begun
only on November 8th; the demonstrations demanding her ouster; and
the congressional hearings on the Hello Garci tapes and the jueteng
scandal that implicated members of her family.
In the same speech Mrs. Arroyo referred to those involved in the
“kangaroo courts,” etc. as “losers without a mandate”
and herself and her administration as “winners.” She
also described media practitioners as “overly-sensitive”
when they protested her false claim that ABS-CBN broadcaster Julius
Babao posted bail last April for suspected terrorist Dawud Santos.
In an effort to curry favor with the public, Mrs. Arroyo cited a
Social Weather Stations survey that found that 41 percent of the
population was tired of “negative news.” From there
she went on to argue that the media should be reporting on her latest,
alleged triumphs, among them the boost in the peso’s value
and her having saved P37 billion as a result of her government’s
supposedly skilful management of its finances.
Mrs. Arroyo apparently wants press agentry rather than journalism.
Like the 41 percent of Filipinos who think the media should paint
pretty pictures of reality no matter how ugly it may be, she too
doesn’t want the truth. But unlike that 41 percent who want
to be diverted from their problems, and who think it’s the
press’ job to do so, she wants the press to report only what’s
favorable to herself and her government.
Every president from Manuel Quezon on has complained about the press.
But it was Ferdinand Marcos who first did something about it. When
Marcos declared martial law in 1972 he shut down critical media
organizations and had selected journalists arrested. He then imposed
press censorship and put in place a number of laws to assure media
docility.
The results were disastrous to the country. Only in 1986 did Filipinos
learn about the growth of the national debt from less than a billion
dollars in the 1960s to about 30 billion dollars by 1986. Until
1986 there were no “negative” reports on the overpricing
and 3,000 defects of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, and none on
the disappearances, the rapes, the torture and the “salvaging”
of suspected political offenders that happened between 1972 and
1986 except in the underground and alternative press.
The regulated media also kept out of their front pages and news
programs the rice shortages, the energy crisis, the suppression
of strikes, the inflation and the runaway poverty that made the
export of labor a key policy of the Marcos regime. They instead
inundated the public with such “good news” as the growth
of the economy based on doctored statistics, and government “victories”
against “Moro secessionists,” and “communist terrorists.”
The control of media during the Marcos period was essential to stabilizing
and sustaining martial rule, the media being crucial elements in
the people’s perception of governance and government, and
therefore pivotal in their support or repudiation of an existing
regime. That is why every modern dictatorship has seen to it that
truth is suppressed and criticism silenced through the regulation
of the media.
In this fundamental fact lies the reason for the Arroyo regime’s
continuing effort to curb free _expression and to impose some control
over the media. It is this which explains why the regime continues
to look into the ways through which, short of declaring martial
law, it can (1) prevent information on the Hello Garcia tapes and
other scandals fueling the present crisis from reaching the people
through the media, as well as (2) curb media criticism of Mrs. Arroyo’s
policies on a range of issues that includes the widespread political
killings and violations of human rights, the Expanded Value Added
Tax, and the Visiting Forces Agreement.
It is absolutely essential from the regime’s standpoint that
the media be silenced, or at least compelled to serve as its mouthpiece.
By January 2006, when the holidays are over, the artificial rise
in the value of the peso caused by the increase in OFW remittances
will stop, and the peso value will return to pre-last quarter levels.
At the same time, the expansion of VAT coverage would have boosted
the prices of most necessities, thus provoking broad public resentment
of the additional two percent VAT. The combination could fuel widespread
protests that could destabilize the Arroyo regime and even lead
to its downfall in the first quarter of 2006.
The most recent attacks on the media should thus be seen as part
of a sustained effort to discredit the media and at the same time
intimidate it into silence—or to at least encourage a predisposition
to the “positive” reporting that’s becoming evident
in some broadsheets—in preparation for a volatile new year.
That the target of the latest attacks on the media was TV giant
ABS-CBN was only incidental. All of media were the targets, and
the media will remain in the regime’s crosshairs as the country
approaches 2006.
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