Page 77 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

66 Benjamin Cole
The CPP-NPA’s involvement in the on-off peace negotiations with the government
is also a major media story. In August 2004 the NDF chief, Luis Jalandoni, told
the Foreign Correspondents Association that the Front did not believe that it could
seize power in the near future, and so was prepared to enter a coalition
government with Arroyo, even though this would fall short of the goal of a Maoist
revolution (Manila Bulletin 2004f ). Yet this proposal came to nothing when later
that month the NDF called off the peace talks, accusing Manila of not doing
enough to persuade international governments to remove them from the US list of
foreign terrorist organisations (Manila Bulletin 2004j). The situation deteriorated
even further when military operations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) during the 2004 Christmas ceasefire were used by the CPP-NPA as the
rationale to publicly declare that a permanent ceasefire with the Arroyo government
was impossible (Sun Star Davao 2004d).
The CPP-NPA also operates a website which carries news, statements,
photographs and other propaganda, as well as offering a forum where people can talk
to each other online, and details of how to obtain CPP publications. The website
enables the CPP-NPA to publicise a greater amount of propaganda in exactly the way
that it wants. For example, it exaggerates the strength of the NPA as twenty-seven bat-
talions of full-time fighters augmented by tens of thousands in the people’s militias,
and hundreds of thousands in self-defence units of the mass organisations (Philippine
Revolution Web Central 2005). The website also enables the CPP-NPA to com-
municate directly with Filipinos living outside of its rural strongholds, particularly in
urban areas. However there is little evidence that the CPP-NPA uses the internet as
anything more than an adjunct to support the messages that it publicises in the main-
stream media. Neither does it need the internet as an organisational device consider-
ing that it has an effective operational command and control system on the ground.
This reporting of the root causes of the conflict as well as CPP-NPA objectives
in the mainstream media represents a significant improvement in the quality of
media reporting of this conflict, but underlying it, remains a considerable amount
of superficial reporting that still reflects the cock fighting analogy that was
coined by Glenda Gloria in 2000. This is particularly true in the reporting of the
military side of the conflict, with the local media in particular reporting every
skirmish between the NPA and the security forces within their locale.
The cock fighting analogy is also reflected in much of the reporting of the
political dimension of the conflict. Typical newspaper reports often comprise of
government claims followed by CPP-NPA rebuttals in the same piece. In one
example from October 2004, Arroyo highlighted ‘growing links’ between some
left wing groups and international terrorist organisations, which prompted her to
review her approach to the peace negotiations. Ka Roger replied that Arroyo’s
claim was ‘a figment of her imagination and is based on the rubbish called
intelligence reports from the AFP and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
Arroyo just wants to divert the people’s attention from plunder in the AFP and the
entire government’ (Manila Bulletin 2004g).
Similarly, the government is also forced to use the media to rebut NDF claims.
In the battle to retain popular support, the government needs to be seen to be
committed to the peace process, and to keep the NDF in the process. In October 2004