Page 91 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

80 Benjamin Cole
no credit for the military successes against the ASG since 2001. The article shows
the US trying to pressure Arroyo into pursuing a more hard line policy, even
though a political solution is the only way of achieving a lasting peace with the
MILF. Yet the Filipino media offered only weak criticism of what was said in the
New York Times article.
The CPP and the MILF have attempted to exploit anti-US sentiment within the
country, particularly the historical antipathy towards the US in Mindanao, in order
to discredit the government. In 2003 for instance, the CPP spokesman, Ka Roger,
warned that the inclusion of the CPP-NPA in the US list of terrorist organisations
was a prelude to US military intervention in the Philippines (Manila Times
2003a). Ka Roger has also denounced the US for trying to blackmail the MILF
into signing a peace deal with the government by threatening to include it on its
list of foreign terrorist organisations and of attempting to blackmail the CPP-NPA
by threatening to only remove it from the list if it submits to the government in
the peace process (Manila Bulletin 2003a).
But despite these occasional outbursts in the media, the negative impact of US
interventionism is not a theme that is pursued in the media to any great extent and
is more than matched by reporting that is supportive of the presence of US troops.
The propaganda value that the CPP-NPA can potentially generate from it illus-
trates the shortsightedness of US policy, but the media has helped to create a
favourable climate for the reception of US messages by linking indigenous
Filipino conflicts to the ‘war on terror’. In addition, widespread public antipathy
towards the MILF, JI, ASG and the CPP-NPA means that US interventionism is
not as politically damaging to the government as it could be.

Conclusion: media impacts
The mainstream media has made some significant progress in improving the
quality of its reporting of these conflicts. There is now a more even-handed
approach to reporting the MILF and the CPP-NPA, which both have full access
to the mainstream media. Prior to 2004 the media had exacerbated the sense of
marginalisation felt by different cultural and religious groups, especially the
Muslim community, through its negative stereotyping and profiling. Headlines
regularly identified ‘Muslim bandits’ and ‘Muslim kidnappers’ (Quintos de Jesus
2003). By 2004 however, such headlines had largely disappeared from newspapers
such as the Manila Times, Manila Bulletin and Inq7.net, although those headlines
will have left a lasting legacy which will not be easily reversed. But nevertheless
there are still some major shortcomings. Reporting of the JI and ASG is still one
sided, and the cock fighting analogy is still prevalent to varying degrees in report-
ing the military dimensions of all of these conflicts. These shortcomings are exac-
erbated by a lack of analysis of key issues and an unquestioning reliance on
official sources.
It is often assumed that an independent media, together with the new media,
will act as an agent of change, but this has not been the case with these conflicts,
although some elements of the Filipino media have increasingly fulfilled the role