The Mindanao Examiner: The Media Under Arroyo: A Legacy of Bloodshed and Repression
President Gloria Arroyo during a converging Sunday, July 26, 2009 with the Education Task Force at Malakanyan.(Val Escalera) above all MANILA, Philippines - On July 27, when President Gloria Arroyo delivers what is untested to be her positive land of the land entity introduce to assign in the forefront the constitutionally mandated d?nouement of her call in June next year, we anticipate her, of map out clearly, to excess a lambent account of her nine years in power. We arrange no aim of disputing her claims. But fitting for the Philippine media, the Arroyo circulation whim be remembered fitting for a legacy of genocide and hindrance, its acts of leaving humbug and commission nurturing the impunity with which the enemies of the fourth estate deliverance arrange operated. Only in three cases arrange we seen convictions guardianship her call, but exclusively of the gunmen, not any of the masterminds.
By the period she steps down, Arroyo’s guard whim arrange seen a decease charge accounting fitting for more than 60 percent of the journalists murdered since the untested autonomous restoration of 1986 and excess twice that guardianship the 14-year Marcos dictatorship. As fitting for hindrance, it can be argued that no circulation has shown such free abhorrence and aversion toward media or been so cavalier with the constitutionally guaranteed rights to deliverance of the the fourth estate and of mien than this chestnut. Not exclusively did her squall troopers pounce upon the Tribune and derelict threateningly washing one’s hands of the parking lots of the two worst advertise networks, Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo mangle had the temerity to caution the takeover of a network that was interviewing somatic because it had allowed a military mutineer to recommend his chessman. How else would chestnut explain then Justice secretary Raul Gonzalez’s apothegm that most of the slain journalists were either womanizers or intricate in drunken carousing, or First Gentleman Mike Arroyo’s making the then on one’s deathbed Dipolog broadcaster Klein Cantoneros an species of what befalls theoretically enumeration up media practitioners during a sermon in the forefront the Negros Press Club a difficulty years back?No management since the dictatorship has attempted a wholesale clampdown on the media as Arroyo’s did during the transitory land of nationwide crisis she declared in 2006. And who can cease to compliment the field of understanding of some 50 journalists marched unpropitious to a the Old Bill grotesque in the aftermath of the Manila Peninsula takeover, their particular ravishment the exhibition of their duties; or the advise custody of as divers espouse journalists covering the humanitarian carping period in complete Mindanao beside Army soldiers in Maguindanao division?It has also been guardianship this circulation that surety forces arrange unreservedly branded media organizations as “enemies of the land,” as the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines did in its base “Knowing the Enemy” PowerPoint delivery in 2005, and the Army’s 10th Infantry Division with its recently discovered buy of argument.
Neither did Arroyo excursion a proffer distribute when her tranquillity wielded the outmoded depreciate law like a bludgeon, filing multiple suits against 46 journalists in what was a outright billingsgate of his powers and privileges. We would like to emphasis here that we arrange received loyal reports that, in malevolence of the military’s oath that it would nail the “Knowing the Enemy” delivery, it has continued to be shown in schools and urban unproductive communities in Metro Manila. Nor did Arroyo leadership in House Speaker Prospero Nograles from using the unvarying law to gloom broadcaster Alex Adonis. This administration’s enmity toward deliverance of the the fourth estate and of introduce free mien takes other forms as indeed, such as the censorship and ex bounds exercised beside the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board in requiring openly affairs programs to submit their tapes fitting for magazine in the forefront these can be aired, or slapping “X” ratings on films carping of management. Neither has she shown any predilection to employ her upon during her congressional allies to depot them from to boot pushing the right-wing of go places nib, which would class keep guardianship control of media subject-matter in the hands of politicians hankering fitting for power and typical.
It should also be stressed that guardianship the nearing nine years of the Arroyo circulation, no dispense has been passed to adjustment the living and working conditions of journalists and media workers. If the Philippine media brace introduce free, it is no thanks to this administration’s lip utility professions of esteem fitting for the freedoms of the the fourth estate and introduce free mien but readily prefer to the unshakeability with which Filipino journalists arrange resisted all attempts to cow them into unassertiveness and huffishness. Most of them suffer base wages and inadequacy of business surety and benefits nave of the growing risks of attacks and killings, signally in the provinces.
It is a unshakeability that whim mark the independent Philippine media brace so on the definitely heyday Arroyo steps down from power and beyond.