66. War flashbacks

Tension in Davao brings back familiar feelings from 2015-2022

Welcome back to Slow News Days, a hopefully weekly newsletter on journalism and journalism-adjacent topics in the Philippines.

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The Philippines marked National Press Freedom Day — more properly Marcelo H. Del Pilar Day because he deserves a holiday and because the community traditionally instead celebrates World Press Freedom Day on May 3 of each year — with little changed and, in fact, with colleagues actually at risk on the ground.

You cannot have missed the ongoing search operations at the Kingdom of Jesus Christ compound in Davao City that began on August 24 — it is hard to ignore thousands of cops combing through a 30-hectare property and the political drama surrounding it.

SUDDENLY, HUMAN RIGHTS: Rights advocates explain human rights issue in the KOJC standoff

More easily missed was the plight of colleagues, from local newsrooms and from national media networks, covering a tense situation while caught between a phalanx of police personnel and hundreds of followers of Apollo Quiboloy, former President Rodrigo Duterte’s spiritual adviser and fugitive from the law in the Philippines and in the US.

Quiboloy’s followers blocked news teams of MindaNews, Newsline Philippines, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and state-run PTV News as they tried to cover a rally in support of the KOJC leader and were accused of being biased and of being paid off.

Video posted on SunStar Davao also showed people throwing mineral water bottles and monobloc chairs at the media.

An earlier video from ONE News showed on of their reporters being driven away, presumably by Quiboloy’s followers, who were shouting at her for being “biased”.

MORE ON THAT HERE: Media personalities file blotter vs KOJC supporters for harassment

The Mindanao Independent Press Council added in a statement that “KOJC followers have been threatening and displaying hostility toward the media” since June, when police first tried to serve warrants on Quiboloy and four others facing cases in Davao and in Pasig

MIPC said the harassment “violates press freedom and hinders the media's ability to impartially inform the public.” 

MORE BROADLY: Press Freedom remains under siege

Ten days into the search for Quiboloy at the KOJC compound, media workers on the ground are exhausted and are still caught between two powerful forces — both with a capacity for violence and both reminding them to be “fair”, which is often shorthand for sticking to their preferred narrative.

This is not new ground for media in the Philippines, but the inability of— both on the national and local level — to ensure a safe environment for media flies in the face of assurances from the current administration that it is friendlier to and more supportive of a free press.

If nothing else, this episode has, at least, given KOJC, which operates red-tagging propaganda machine SMNI, an appreciation of the need to verify claims made by the police and by government in general after

SOME LINKS YOU MIGHT LIKE:

• Journalist on hiatus Xave Gregorio has started mamser.net, a website on queer news and life in the Philippines and which “seeks to take queer matters into queer hands, with the belief that no one is in a better position to tell queer stories than queer people themselves.”
  

• Mariejo Ramos writes about small-scale mining while also making us die of envy every day:

  It's a man's world mining gold in the Philippines - but it's the women who come off worst.
  
  Be it cooking toxic pans of mercury, scouring mud pools for cheap slivers of hope or sluicing the boggy soil - women do the hardest jobs and get paid the least.

• Award-winning documentary “Alipato at Muog” has been given an X-rating by the Movie and Television Classification and Regulatory Board for “[tending] to undermine the faith and confidence of the people in their government and/or duly-constituted authorities.”
  
  Two reviews while that rating is under appeal:
  
  On the Fringes : Alipato at Muog, and the roller coaster of emotions
  ‘Alipato at Muog’ review: Why the film demands to be seen by the public
  

• Finally, from abroad: How a bill meant to save journalism from big tech ended up boosting AI and bailing out Google instead