Page 76 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

The Philippines media 65
EU has done likewise at the prompting of the Arroyo government. The terrorist
label is also used by some sections of the Filipino media, particularly provincial
newspapers such as the Mindanao Daily Mirror, which reports and reflects the
views of hard line local politicians such as Rodrigo Duterte, the Mayor of Davao
City in Mindanao (Mindanao Daily Mirror 2005h). However the broadsheet
Manila newspapers generally label the CPP-NPA as guerillas, militants, insur-
gents or rebels. These labels are not defined, but they are nevertheless useful in
differentiating CPP-NPA violence from the terrorist violence of Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI) and the ASG, which will be examined later in this chapter. This
willingness to differentiate between the nature of different forms of conflict
represent a significant advance in the quality of reporting since 2000.
Having direct access to the media enables the CPP-NPA to use its revolutionary
propaganda to influence media outputs. One dimension of this has been to exploit
media reporting of the root causes of the conflict. These are now so widely accepted
that even Arroyo has publicly conceded that poverty has bred many of the insurrec-
tions in the Philippines. This gives the CPP-NPA a major advantage in the propa-
ganda war. Arroyo has pledged to bring development to the underdeveloped corners
of the Philippines, but it is easy for the CPP-NPA to dismiss this promise as a hol-
low slogan because in rural areas, poverty, landlessness, government neglect and the
stranglehold of elite families and businesses on the economy and political power,
remain as real as ever (Manila Times 2003g). It is difficult for the government to
argue against this convincingly until real change has been delivered. The weakness
of the Filipino economy makes this difficult to achieve, but the actions of the
government have not made the job any easier. The CPP-NPA has been able to score
propaganda points against the government’s social and economic policies by citing
the administration’s policy of freezing wages amid soaring prices, allowing foreign
oil companies to raise oil prices with impunity, as well as allowing worsening
corruption and criminal activities by government officials (Sun Star Davao 2004d).
The NDF argues that
a just and lasting peace can only be achieved by resolving the roots of the armed
conflict, primarily by carrying out land reform and national industrialization....
The Arroyo regime’s puppetry to US interests, its worsening corruption and
criminal activities, the intensified hardships and oppression of the masses
and the brazen use of fascist state violence all justify the intensification of
revolutionary armed struggle.
(Sun Star Davao 2004d)

This places the blame for the continuation of the war squarely on the government,
and sets the stage for the CPP-NPA to publicise what it has done to alleviate these
problems. On Mindanao the CPP has briefed the local media about its programme
of implementing revolutionary land reform, decreasing land rent, raising the
wages of agricultural workers, implementing revolutionary justice, maintaining
peace and order and providing health care, education and other public services to
the people (Mindanao Daily Mirror 2005a).