I wrote on the real dangers to press freedom we face, and (irony of ironies) Inquirer.net decided not to run my column. But it's in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on INQ Plus, and on Inquirer Mobile. Published on July 27, 2021.
ANC's "The Rundown" with lawyer Mike Navallo and Nikki de Guzman gave me an opportunity on the morning of President Duterte's last State of the Nation Address to speak on press freedom in the Philippines. I tried to offer what we may call a different kind of color commentary.
But first, it is important to emphasize that it isn't only journalists in the Philippines or their colleagues abroad who believe that press freedom is in danger under President Duterte. In the November 2020 Social Weather Stations survey, some two-thirds of voting-age Filipinos agreed with the statement that "it was dangerous to print or broadcast anything critical of the administration, even if it is the truth." That's a clear indication that the public knows that journalism that is critical of the administration meets a hostile reception from the administration. (To my mind, that finding also indirectly reflects the climate of fear that the surveys have arguably labored under since 2016, when the extrajudicial killings began en masse.)
The finding—65 percent in agreement with the statement that read, in Filipino, "Mapanganib na mag-lathala/mag-print or mag-broadcast ng anumang kritikal sa administrasyon, kahit na ito ay ang katotohanan"—was up from 51 percent only in the July 2020 survey, and must certainly have been caused by the shutdown and the rejection of the new franchise of the ABS-CBN network.
How does the danger manifest?
Continue reading "Column: Yellow, red, blue, white, black"
WordPress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment