The College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) held a protest action today in Mendiola, Manila to condemn the Securities and Exchange Commission’s revocation of media outfit Rappler’s license to operate.
According to the group, the SEC’s decision on Rappler’s registration is “not only an attack to Philippine press but a grave attack on the nation’s moribund democracy”.
Photos by Lyann Cabador
“President Rodrigo Duterte is clearing his path for his grand dictatorial ambition in a shameless attack on press freedom, with SEC’s revocation of Rappler’s registration for allegedly violating constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership and control of mass media entities,” said Jose Mari Callueng, president of the CEGP.
Callueng added that it is not only Rappler whose press freedom is being attacked. Members of alternative media have been tagged by President Rodrigo Duterte as communist or members of the New People’s Army.
CEGP documented several campus publications and student journalists across the country who have been subjected to various forms of harassment, red tagging and military surveillance.
“Duterte is slowly putting death to press freedom, silencing those exposing the fully unveiled brutality of his regime that is leading to a dictatorship,” he said.
Media denounces Duterte’s tyrannical fist
Let’s Organize for Democracy and Integrity (LODI), a group composed of artists and media workers, sees the latest attacks against the Philippine press as part of the regime’s preparation for the installation of full-blown tyranny.
“The Duterte regime aims to silence the press and clamp down citizens’ right to free expression as a prelude for an indefinite period of one-man rule. That is what the whole governance pivot aims for,” the group said.
Altermidya, a nationwide network of alternative media outfits, also decried the government’s move against Rappler.
“The motive behind the revocation of Rappler’s SEC registration is also questionable in the context of the Duterte administration’s push for 100% ownership of public utilities and mass media through Charter change. We have always been supportive of the constitutional ban on foreign ownership of media, but will oppose its use to silence the press,” said Altermidya national chair Prof. Luis Teodoro.
Altermidya and CEGP further urged fellow media practitioners in both the alternative and corporate media to resist all forms of repression and attacks against press freedom as a vital part of the country’s opposition to the Duterte regimes’ march to tyranny and suppression.
“The Philippine press should organize themselves as militant and progressive journalists and fight back against the permeating tyrannical rule in the country,” CEGP said.
