The Marcos Regime and the Making of a Subservient Philippine Press: Part I

Violation of the People’s Right to Information

With tight restrictions on all media facilities that managed to stay operational, there arose the question on what it was actually like to be on the receiving end of the news. How did Filipinos keep abreast of current events? Were they aware of the watchful eye that hovered above the heads of writers and reporters?

An article from the New York Times in 1973 says that newspaper readers in the Philippines, normally having access only to government-approved or produced media, had learned to get their news by reading between the lines. For example, reports on awards being conferred on soldiers stationed in Mindanao were picked at for clues on the developments of the military campaign against Muslim insurgents. When the reports were about soldiers receiving awards posthumously, it was understood that the struggle must have entered a particularly bloody phase in recent weeks.[12]

When newspapers in October 1973 proudly announced the arrest of “NoNo” Ituriaga, a  key member of the “robberykidnap gang” that targeted upper-class houses in Manila, people wondered why they were reading about the gang for the first time, when apparently it had been roaming the city for several months, augmenting its list of robberies and kidnappings, having even committed the brutal murder of a seven-month old baby.[13]

The writer of the New York Times article, Joseph Lelyveld, attributed the silence of the press to the unwritten rule that crimes can only be made public when they had already been solved by the police.[14] Similarly, phenomena like the violent struggle in Mindanao were published only if they were written in an angle that highlighted the valiant efforts of the military while diminishing the less-than-pleasant aspects of the story (that is, killings, community displacements, and persistent unrest).

If mainstream media in the country kept mum on matters unpleasant to the administration, journalists abroad like Lelyveld kept watch and reported with the freedom that their counterparts in the Philippines could have only prayed for. Naturally, the administration had to keep a special eye out for imported media. Nine issues of Time magazine that were released from January 1973 to February 1974 were banned in the country for featuring articles that either criticized Marcos or shed a favorable light on Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., a frontman for the opposition. One issue was also banned for covering “The Remarkable Renaissance of Karl Marx”. Several other issues from the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Economist, Newsweek, and others were banned for the same reasons.[15]

How did the approved local media operate? For one, they needed the blessings of the President and his aides, if they were not themselves owned by friends or relatives of the President. Neophyte newspapers like WE For the Young Filipino in 1977 introduced themselves to the public by pledging allegiance to the regulations of the regime.[16] More forthrightly were the calls editors received from Malacañang with specific instructions on stories that were to be played up and others that were to be junked. In at least one other instance, a publisher who had printed an article echoing an opinion from the opposition was berated over the phone by Palace agents the very same day the article was released; sometimes, editors were summoned and made to apologize.[17] And these were only the mild cases of intimidation. Military harassment, libel suits, and forced closures kept journalists up at night. As National Press Club (NPC) member and would-be NPC President Antonio Nieva put it, Marcos had the power to close down a newspaper and order the arrest of a newspaperman by “invoking national security on practically anything.”[18] The result? Traumatized publishers and a media landscape without variation. “If you’ve read one paper, you’ve read all the papers,” was the saying that went around.[19]

Opinions on the journalists of the time were mixed. One side fumed at the meekness of the press, wanting it to push back against the control of the government. Another side ridiculed it for failing to see the difference between censorship and discipline, or between free speech and licentiousness. Yet another side was satisfied with that belief that the press had finally learned to restrain itself from the temptations of sensationalism, while a fourth side sympathized with the press and condemned the regime for forcing its media workers into inhospitable conditions.[20] Nevertheless, all four sides had a common ground: they all acknowledged that the Government itself exercised editing powers on the media and left certain kinds of information out of circulation.

A Touchy Government

To better understand the attitude of the regime towards the press, one would have to look at the case of journalist Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc. What turned out to be a protracted struggle for free speech on the end of Magsanoc came into full view in July 1981 when the Philippines had just had its first Presidential election in twelve years.[21] Marcos won by a dramatic landslide against his two main opponents, having garnered 88.02% of the votes alongside Alejo Santos’ 8.25% and Bartolome Cabangbang’s 3.60%.[22] Suspicions were naturally high. Magsanoc, an editor of the Philippine Panorama magazine, wrote a bold article lambasting the President and the corruption surrounding his inauguration into a third term. The article is entitled “There Goes the New Society, Welcome the New Republic,” and was published in the July 12th issue of the Panorama. It concludes:

“The problem is a Marcos who with all his powers is powerless before corruption and corruptors. It is a Marcos astride the same tired tiger (the discarded and discredited New Society) carrying on under a different name, the New Republic. If that continues, the Filipino, docile as he has been as the carabao these 16 years cannot but give way and tear at the Republic, whatever the kind.”[23]

Magsanoc’s message was not taken lightly. Three powerful institutions – the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, the Commission on Elections, and the Ministry of Justice – scrambled the next day to warn Panorama’s publisher Hans Menzi of the penalties of sedition. They demanded him to make a public statement on the “libelous” sentiments expressed in the article. Beneath their wordy threats lay the order to swiftly and immediately discharge Magsanoc from her post.[24] The indefatigable Magsanoc did resign, but not without a defense of her conviction that “the untrammelled flow of information is the basis of an enlightened public opinion. Without it, those who would be tyrants will flourish; with it, truth is free to combat error.” Her resignation letter was dated July 13.[25]

Magsanoc’s case is a classic illustration of the regime’s hypersensitivity towards criticisms. Reuben R. Canoy posited in 1980 that the Marcos administration could and would tolerate the occasional denunciation of a public official or office, but only to make room for some semblance of free speech; however, there is an iron-clad unwritten rule that journalists should under no circumstance at all direct their criticisms towards the President, his family, and friends or else they will bear the brunt of the regime’s ire.[26] The unfolding of Magsanoc’s case a year later proved Canoy right.