The pro-Duterte Congress also threatened not to renew the franchise of the biggest TV network ABS-CBN, which had allegedly refused to air his political advertisements before the 2016 election. The same network had been shut down by Marcos in 1972 and its president imprisoned; the station finally went back on air again during the People Power revolution 14 years later. In January 2018 the Security and Exchange Commission revoked Rappler’s licence, accusing the online news site of violating laws over foreign ownership. Maria Ressa, its CEO, denied this and condemned the SEC’s decision as ‘a concerted effort to turn journalism into a crime’. Rapplerhad previously accused the government of ‘weaponising’ the internet through the deployment of pro-Duterte bloggers and trolls. The president had, in turn, branded Rapplera ‘fake news outlet’, and his spokesman said he had every ‘right to be angry and curse the press’.
But Duterte’s disgruntlement with sections of the Philippine press are not entirely without basis: some Filipino reporters have indeed been corrupted and are susceptible to influence peddlers. Journalism is a very poorly paid profession in the Philippines. As one newspaper editor, with decades in the business, but who asked to remain anonymous, put it: ‘In this country, we have a culture of “envelopmental journalism”. Often, at press conferences, there is a little envelope, containing a “gift”, in return for promotional favours. The temptation is not easy to resist.’ They’re all at it, the editor said — congressmen, senators, governors, and mayors. And Mayor Duterte Harry, it is widely alleged by insiders, was no exception, with scores of Davao journalists in his pocket, offered exclusive access or foreign trips in exchange for favourable coverage.
The foreign press is not, I discovered, entirely without blame — although their pecuniary dilemmas come in a different guise. Unlike other countries in this region, ‘chequebook journalism’ prevails in the Philippines, where interviewees are not always minded to divulge something for nothing and past precedent has now made things harder. On one notable and unbelievably frustrating occasion, I was forced to walk away from a well-placed contact, a whistle-blower I had sought to cultivate, because of a last-minute demand for a fistful of dollars in exchange for information. Over the months, I was to learn of other questionable transactions between foreign journalists (from various countries) and their sources. ‘Reimbursements’ to sources are a grey area, however, and some journalists take a less Manichean view when it comes to reimbursing ‘costs’ to sometimes extremely poor people. The danger is when reimbursements for time, travel, and expenses mutate into paid inducements to talk, which, in the view of most journalists, crosses a professional ethical boundary and undermines the credibility of claims made. To the best of my knowledge, none of the reports I have cited draws on the testimony of paid sources.
There were no Manila envelopes stuffed full of pesos on show in Malacañang Palace late one night, when President Duterte called a news conferences after a notoriously grim episode in his war on drugs. Predictably, the president was running late, so, as the Philippine press corps gossiped and cameramen elbowed for position, there was time to take in the surroundings. We had been ushered into the grand wood-panelled Heroes’ Hall, a large reception room decorated with elaborate glass chandeliers, ornate mirrors, and portraits of the 16 presidents of the inde-pendent Philippine Republic, independent from the United States since the Treaty of Manila was signed in 1946.
On the wall to my immediate right was an oil painting of a beaming, fresh-faced Ferdinand Marcos, who, after his overthrow, died ignominiously in exile in Hawaii in 1989. The dead despot spent the next 27 years in a glass box in his home province, attended by his loving widow, Imelda (whose nickname for her husband was ‘Andy’). His badly embalmed body had reportedly begun to ‘melt’ by the time Duterte ordered his burial in Manila, in the Cemetery of Heroes, five months into his presidency. (It’s now believed that the body on display for all those years was actually a wax effigy, not actually Andy’s corpse, as the family have always claimed.)
The decision to glorify such a controversial and disgraced figure, and caving in to the wishes of the Marcos family, sent shock waves around the country and triggered protests in Manila, but Duterte got away with it. He has openly expressed admiration for Marcos, once describing him as the country’s best president, and on another occasion saying that martial law under Marcos had been ‘very good’.