The Press in a Populist Era: The Philippine Press Freedom Movement under Rodrigo R. Duterte

Populist leaders around the globe can deliberately reshape the discourse of press freedom. Whether offline or online, these leaders can arouse movements that challenge or simply mock the traditional journalistic reportage, as in the case of Narendra Modi of India and Donald Trump of the US who decided to manufacture their “Twitter capital” to purport a direct (but one way) line to the public.

In this study, I present the case of Rodrigo R. Duterte of the Philippines who, in spite of not personally utilising any social media capital, appears fairly successful in maintaining a convincing nationwide trust rating.

I investigate the political interplay between Duterte and the press. On the one hand, I am interested in the kind of populist politics that Duterte intends to concoct and the press freedom movement that it attempts to arouse, on the other.

From a conceptual standpoint, I draw upon the seeming consensus among populism and social movement scholars notably Ernesto Laclau and Sidney Tarrow that populism is largely determined by the centrality of the political leader and the rise of “the people” or movements. From a normative standpoint, I am interested in the way the two, the leader and the movement, reshape the discourse of press freedom in non-Western (but often Western-inspired) societies like the Philippines.

Interviews with selected Filipino journalists and academics engaged in press freedom and human rights advocacies were conducted. To ensure the trustworthiness of the study, I used a semi triangulation approach to data sources by looking at case documentations and investigative reports conducted by civil society groups.

Impunity in the press, or the failure of the State to stop and resolve various attacks against journalists, remains the fundamental hurdle in press freedom. The attacks in forms of killings and threats remain pandemic, offline and online. The proliferation of online trolls in the social media, for one, creates an atmosphere of insecurity among journalists and others critical of the Duterte administration.

The overall critical foundation of the Philippine press is in itself a powerful bloc that could reorient the populist administration of Duterte. But when his hard core public followers attempt to mobilise its own press, the very same logic of populism more so of democracy may be negated and thus replaced with autocratic populism.