Page 84 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

The Philippines media 73
students and teachers on Basilan island in March 2001. Several of the hostages
were killed, including a Catholic priest who was tortured and shot in the head.
Two months later it seized three Americans and a group of Filipinos from the
island of Palawan. Many of the Filipino hostages were recovered after ransoms
were paid, but an American hostage was beheaded, and another was killed during
a rescue mission in June 2002 (Manila Bulletin 2004e). In 2004 the ASG shifted
the focus of its activities to bombings, the first of which was the sinking of the
Superferry14 in 2004, which left more than a hundred people dead. The govern-
ment has declared all-out war on the ASG, and since receiving US military assis-
tance, the AFP and PNP had considerable success in reducing its active numbers
from 2,000 to 200 between 2001 and 2002 (The Economist 2002).
The ASGs relationship with the media is somewhat contradictory. On the one
hand it has courted media attention. Coverage of the ASG by Manila dailies
increased in both frequency and prominence following the hostage crises of 2000
(Asia Times Online 2000b), to the extent that it eclipsed reporting of President
Estrada’s military offensive against the MILF, despite the fact that the MILF con-
stitutes a much more significant political threat. The main reason for this was the
ASG’s media strategy. It singled out news organisations for scoops and exclu-
sives, whereas other armed groups are more reticent or rely on their political
fronts to deal with the press. Another reason is because stories involving the ASG
followed traditional Filipino news values – they had more drama and more excite-
ment, and they were easier to sell and TV exploited the visual elements (Quintos
de Jesus 2003). To gain maximum media exposure journalists and TV crews were
invited to visit the camps where hostages were being held, and the foreign media
were specifically asked to attend in some instances.
However the ASG has also attempted to intimidate the media, and this has
included kidnapping journalists. It has also required journalists to pay for access,
often robbing them of cash and other possessions whenever they visited ASG
camps (Asia Times Online 2000b). This raises ethical issues for journalists and
also questions about how objective reporters could afford to be if they wanted
access to ASG camps. In November 2004, the group was accused of killing Gene
Boyd Lumawag, a photo editor for the independent news agency MindaNews,
although the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines questioned the
military’s claim that the ASG was responsible, and the murder remains unsolved
(Manila Times 2004e).
Even after the big kidnapping incidents, the ASG has remained a major news
story in the Philippines, but the majority of this reporting still resembles the cock
fighting analogy that Glenda Gloria coined in 2000. The majority of reports about
the ASG consist of warnings by the security forces of impending attacks and a
steady trickle of stories related to skirmishes and the killing or capture of ASG
fighters. This may be because the government is winning the military conflict
with the ASG, but there is also no peace process to draw attention away from the
military side of the conflict. As a result, the ASG has been unable to significantly
influence media outputs since 2001, despite being able to force itself onto the
media agenda.