Welcome back to Slow News Days, a hopefully weekly newsletter on journalism and journalism-adjacent topics in the Philippines.
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The media community was shocked to learn this week that the National Bureau of Investigation had arrested three alleged hackers, including the data officer of broadsheet Manila Bulletin, for cyber attacks on “websites of the military, National Security Council, and of several banks.”
We were even more shocked still that the hacking was supposedly instructed by Art Samaniego — campaigner against scams and the Bulletin’s senior technology officer — for content for his column, an allegation that he was quick to reject.
The reveal was met with side comments from some in media who have had their differences with Samaniego, with some saying it was shocking but not surprising.
NewsBytesPH, which has been in the IT news space for at least a decade, provides necessary (and necessarily snarky) context:
Samaniego, who has denied the allegations against him in TV interviews, is the same author of the fake article on Comelec hacking, which was published by the Manila Bulletin as a banner story immediately prior to the 2022 national elections.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines is still discussing our position on the arrests and the allegations, but the consensus so far is that instigating incidents like data breaches in order to write about them is unethical, problematic, and at the very least weird.
We do have to consider, though, that the NBI has not had the cleanest of records on operations against cyber crime, especially against those whose politics might not align with the administration.
It arrested a teacher in 2020 without a warrant over tweets the NBI saw as seditious and a threat to then President Rodrigo Duterte and, in the same year, summoned a Facebook user for commenting on the government’s purchase of an executive jet in the middle of a pandemic.
The year before, the NBI arrested a website creator for allegedly uploading videos that claimed Duterte had links to the illegal drug trade. That arrest was also made without a warrant, with the Department of Justice arguing it was done during “hot pursuit.”
Those arrests as well as documented cases of misuse of the law to harass and silence journalists mean we have to be vigilant about due process in the investigation even if the case is weird. Or especially because it is.
The Journalists' Code of Ethics limits journalists to using “only…fair and honest methods in [our] effort to obtain news, photographs and/or documents” and while there are arguments likening this — again, if true — to going undercover in pursuit of a story, that does not seem like a very honest comparison.
In any case, as lawyer Oliver Reyes — whose thoughts have been quoted by Abogado and apparently the New York Times — points out: “I can't think of a bigger local journalism scandal in the last 20 years or so.”
That it comes while we’re already grappling with how to retain, and reclaim, audience trust makes this episode all the more unfortunate.
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Anyway, you may have missed NUJP’s report on red-tagging, which was done to help address government’s claim that it does not happen, to call attention to the practice, and to seek ways forward in seeking redress for victims: Government behind majority of red-tagging cases involving journalists – NUJP study
A civil suit that journalist Atom Araullo filed against the red-tagging duo from SMNI, who seem to have skipped proceedings altogether, is up for resolution.
More on red-tagging and the recent Supreme Court decision acknowledging that "red-tagging, vilification, labelling, and guilt by association threaten a person’s right to life, liberty, or security, which may justify the issuance of a writ of amparo" from former SC PIO chief Ted Te on PumaPodcast’s “Teka Teka”.
There has not been a lot of uproar from politicians over a Reuters report on a US military influence operation in the Philippines during the pandemic, although there have been calls to hold hearings on it at the Senate and House.
Former vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said he was not aware of the covert operation (because covert) and that he believes the report “is not true” while the Department of Health has only said that the reported operation deserves to be investigated.
That the US military did disinfo in the Philippines is ironic given US support for fact checks and for tracking influence operations by others, and because of low trust in China among Filipinos.
It is also jokerfying because it likely put lives at risk, or at the very least added to vaccine hesitation in the Philippines, which has been a problem since the Dengvaxia controversy of 2017.
More on the influence operation against Sinovac from The Conversation: US military launched a secret anti-vax campaign in the Philippines – here’s why I’m not surprised