One lasting and important legacy of the 50 years of American colonialism is the privately owned mass media forms competing in a free market. After the proclamation of independence and the establishment of a democratic government, a free press patterned after that of the United States was manipulated by competing business and political groups to advance their interests and ideologies.
Media ownership poses real constraints on the freedom of journalists to report freely and responsibly. Most media owners are business tycoons who operate interlocking corporate concerns and who use newspapers to promote their business interests and to influence a society where, in doing business, whom you know often counts more than entrepreneurial expertise.
In October 1995, the Manila Bulletin ran daily news stories and opinion articles criticizing the sale of the Manila Hotel to a Malaysian consortium. The paper asserted that the hotel was part of the national patrimony and should be sold to a Filipino company. As a result, former President Fidel V Ramos intervened by asking his aides to work out a compromise with the Malaysians, and the Supreme Court of the Philippines, in a controversial decision, decided in favor of the owner of the newspaper, Don Emilio Yap.
This case demonstrates how press proprietors have abused their powers, setting aside the canons of good journalism, by using the news and opinion pages of their newspapers to campaign for their business interest. Media owners have put the profitability of their business enterprise over that of their newspapers' duty to report without fear and favor. It would be simpler, however, to say that newspapers are merely mouthpieces of their owners.
On the other hand, some editors manage to strike out a relationship where media owners have a hand in drafting editorial policies but leave the newsroom decisions to professional journalists. In other newspapers, editors unquestioningly accept the rules set by owners and dutifully execute orders to highlight or stop a news story. Sometimes, no rules are laid down, but there is an unspoken understanding that critical stories about the owners and their friends will be toned down, buried in the inside pages, or not printed at all.
In March 1999, former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada filed a libel case against the Manila Times, then owned by the industrial complex of the Gokongweis. Estrada accused that the morning daily was a part of an orchestrated effort to discredit him. He asked the respondents to pay PhP101 million for exemplary damages.
Estrada had taken indignation on an article published in the Feb. 16, 1999 issue of the Manila Times stating that he was made an unwitting ninong to a controversial PhP17 billion power contract between an Argentine firm and the National Power Corporation.
The story angered Estrada, compelling him to mouth a witless unpresidential insult on the ownership of the paper. The libel suit was not pursued but only after the Manila Times owner made a public apology and after the controlling interest of the Manila Times had passed on the hands of an alleged presidential crony.
Since the re-establishment of democracy in 1986, Estrada is the first Philippine president to employ non-state mechanism to clamp down on a critical press. In addition to putting pressure on the business of media proprietors, Estrada's open encouragement of an advertising boycott of the Philippine Daily Inquirer was decried by media groups as a threat to press freedom.
Estrada, who was a former action film star and movie producer, encouraged movie producers in July 1999 not to place advertisements in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which he said was unfairly critical of his administration. In addition, big companies with huge advertising budgets and sympathetic to Estrada have also withdrawn advertisements from the newspaper. Malacañang denied it had anything to do with the move and that it was certainly not a persuaded reaction from its sympathizers.
Estrada's action reflected a lack of comprehension of the role of a free press in a democratic society, which the presidency has the obligation to preserve and uphold. At its best, it displayed the bad temper of a distressed individual who assumed that the President deserves acceptance without difference of opinion and not the intellectual sobriety of leaders who recognizes the valuable contribution of a critical comment.
Perceptive politicians have noted the increasing influence and power of the media in the making and unmaking of public figures. Bad publicity makes politicians quake and can mean death to a promising political career. Good publicity, on the other hand, can throw a relative unknown into the dizzying heights of media stardom.
To a man, politicians agree that the three requisites for a successful campaign are money, media, and machinery. Gone are the days of guns, goons, and golds. As Philippine society becomes more exposed to newspapers, periodicals, radio, television, and online publications, a politician's fate often hangs on how well he is treated by the media.
