The media has its roots in the colonial past of the Philippines, and the first Spanish-language newsletter in 1637. It is a legacy that is seen to connect the development of the Filipino media to European newspapers via the emergence of Philippine nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the country’s independence movement, providing an anti-colonial press (Coronel 2000, p. 149).
America also had a strong influence on the press during its occupation of the Philippines, and introduced movies, television and the radio, the latter in 1922. This left Filipinos with a legacy of private ownership of the broadcast media, a trend which continued when television was introduced by American engineer James Lindenberg in the 1950s, and a ‘penchant for following American cultural fare’ (Zubri 1993, p. 188).
Given the spread of the Filipino people across so many islands, the broadcast media was an effective means of communication. Radio quickly grew to 213 stations by 1968, 40 in Greater Manila alone. By 1966, there were 18 privately-owned television channels (Masalog 2000, p. 377).
The growth of the local industry has been remarkable given the attempt by President Marcos to silence the country’s ‘potent mass media’ (Zubri 1993, p. 188). When he declared martial law in 1972, Marcos ordered all mass media closed except for the government radio and TV stations in Manila. For a while, the media that was allowed to operate was either under direct control of the government, or put under Roberto Benedicto, a Marcos crony. The pronouncement by Marcos in 1977, that anyone who
acts or speaks against the government was subversive, served as a clear guide to the regime’s attitude to the media (Youngblood, 1977).
The period between 1972 and Marcos’s overthrow in 1986 represented an authoritarian break to the traditional elite consensus, as the State sought to control an increasingly restive populace and Marcos sought to destroy the traditional elite who were against him, and reward those who gave him support. The nationalistic ideals heralding the redistribution of monopo- lies that were traditionally owned by Chinese and Mestizo oligarchs to Filipino businessmen – Marcos cronies – represented little more than an excuse for graft and corruption.
Marcos alienated many of the illustrado, the oligarchy created by the US colonial power, which remained critical of his administration. The sugar magnates, the Lopez Family, found their businesses confiscated after con- tinuing to rail against the corruption of the Marcos Regime, and President of ABS-CBN (Asia’s first commercial television broadcaster), Eugenio Lopez Jr, was imprisoned in 1972. He escaped in 1977, and fled abroad, as did many of the old political elite (Owen 2005, p. 455).
So while Marcos brought a short period of economic stability and growth under the aegis of US-sponsored ‘structural adjustment pro- grammes’ and development aid, it did not last. The Marcos dictatorship degenerated into crony capitalism buffeted by a volatile global economy. It was also a particularly traumatic era in Philippine politics as it politicized the military. The Philippines military grew dramatically in size under Marcos, and heightened areas of political tension creating many of the conflicts, such as Muslim secessionism, which continued into the twenty- first century, in the Southern Province of Mindanao (Tuano and Alegre, 2005).
It is also notable that the 1970s saw the emergence of the trend of devel- opmental journalism, with its early development beginning in the Philippines. The Press Foundation for Asia – led by Juan Mercado, Alan Chalkley, Jose Luna Castro and Romeo Abundo – was founded in 1967, at a meeting of Asian editors and publishers in Manila. The Foundation worked in parallel with the Los Baños College of Development Communication at the University of the Philippines. The Los Baños School evolved from the practices of what began as the Office of Extension and Publications of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in 1954, under which some staffmembers began to practice and study how communication could be used to address problems of agricul- tural and rural development.4It represented a professional position on the creation of content and the role of the media that continued into the twenty-first century, and was seen as the favoured alternative by many of Asia’s political elite to the western media model.
The Foundation, along with the Philippine Press Institute, the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication, the Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre, the United Nations Development Programme’s Development Communication Support Service, the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, the Universities of Singapore and Malaysia and the Manila-based Communication Foundation for Asia, highlighted issues and events related to population, science and technology, health, nutrition and education.
By the 1980s, however, the Philippine media did begin to reflect the dis- content with the Marcos regime. As the coalition that supported Marcos began to break up, it began to encounter opposition from different ele- ments in society, both urban, around LABAN, based in the Manila area and including Benigno Aquino, and in the rural areas where rebel move- ments like The Communist Party of the Philippines (officially banned) and its military wing, the New People’s Army, and the Muslim secessionist movement, especially the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (MNLF) in Mindanao, were increasingly active.
Of particular note for this book is that the media played an important role in the emergence of political opposition to Marcos. The alternative press and its use of communications technology in the form of Xerox jour- nalism and cassette journalism made it impossible for the Marcos regime to suppress information on the assassination, in 1983, of Senator Benigno Aquino – an event which, itself, took place in front of the television cameras. Campus publications took an activist stand on social issues. The Philippine Daily Inquirerfounded on 9 December, 1985, became the leading newspaper after the EDSA Revolution in 1986 (Media Museum 2006).
Radio also became an instrument of change as the Marcos support base began to crumble, something that still resonated in the twenty-first century, as local radio reporters remained outspoken and represented the main target of violence against journalists in the Philippines some 20 years later.
On 23 February, 1986, the Head of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, Cardinal Sin, speaking on the Church radio, Radio Veritas, asked the people to support those rebelling against Marcos. When this station was closed by Marcos, pirate radio stations like Radyo Bandidowere used, as groups like the Catholic Church encouraged popular demonstrations and reform groups within the army undermined the military consensus which had backed Marcos, with retired military officers speaking out against the assassination of Benigno Aquino, arguing that the regime, not the military itself, was at fault (Casper 1995, p. 110).
Marcos also came in for growing criticism from the foreign media. In February 1973, five months after Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, The Bangkok Postin Thailand ran a series of articles that gave
the international community a different account of what was happening in the Philippines. The articles, written by opposition senator, Benigno
‘Ninoy’ Aquino Jr, from his prison cell, were smuggled to Thailand to become The Bangkok Post’s ‘world-exclusive’ (Go 2003).
Further afield, the media was even more critical of the Marcos regime.
Lewis Simon of US newspaper group Knight Ridder won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1985, following a series which began with cov- erage of the assassination of Benigno Aquino. As the international media began to show the excesses of the Marcos regime, Marcos lost the support of a critical ally, the United States, and was finally toppled by the EDSA revolution in 1986, as allies like Fidel Ramos and Juan Ponce Enrile turned against him (Casper 1995, p. 109).
Clearly, the media had proved a useful resource for the coalition which toppled Marcos, from the use of the broadcast media to simpler ICT such as Xeroxed copies of speeches and mobile telephony to organize demon- strations. As ICT developed further, the Internet also became a space for opposition voices to wage their propaganda war, something at which they have become more adept. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front maintained its own website,5that carried daily news and photographs about the rebel group. Eid Kabalu, the MILF spokesman, was always available for media interviews, unlike many of the military generals and their public affairs spokesmen. This was also the same for Gregorio Rosal, the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) spokesman, and other rebel leaders in Mindanao were as active as Kabalu: ‘They regularly speak on radio pro- grams and occasionally grant clandestine interviews in their hideouts for selected journalists’ (Zamboanga Journal2006).
The outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), had a website, but it had disappeared by 2006.6The site, which previously posted news and photographs of war victories against the military and police and anti-government propaganda became home to travel and tourism portals. Gone was the red hammer and sickle flag, and in its place was an image of a clear blue sky and the headline: ‘Welcome to the Philippinerevolution.Org’.7