Page 92 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

The Philippines media 81
of agent of restraint. The improvements in media performance have been most
beneficial to the CPP-NPA and the MILF, which have both been able to influence
media outputs to some extent. Yet despite occasionally being able to politically
discomfit the government, the practical impact of this reporting has been limited.
It has not helped to generate mass popular support for any of these groups and has
not generated any pressure on the government to make significant concessions to
any of them.
The media has had a bigger impact in terms of de-legitimising the ASG by
perpetuating its status as a bandit organisation, downplaying its Islamist ideology,
and publicising its violence as being gratuitous by failing to make the connection
with its root causes. The nature of this reporting both reflects and reinforces the
predominant view of the ASG within the government and Filipino society, and
even within the Muslim community, where the group remains marginalised. This
is partly a result of the ASG’s lack of sophistication in handling the media, but it
is also a consequence of media hostility towards the group, which was reflected
in its unwillingness to accept the ASG’s attempt to re-brand itself. The internet
seems to have had no impact in terms of challenging these preconceptions. As a
consequence, ASG violence has had little impact in terms of generating popular
support or forcing concessions from the government.
The media has also helped to create a perception that the threat from JI is
probably greater than it actually is. This has had impact in terms of rooting
indigenous conflicts within the ‘war on terror’ in the public consciousness and
building public support for a more hard line military response in dealing with the
group.
Perhaps the most positive media impact lies in how it differentiates between the
MILF and the CPP-NPA, on the one hand, as secessionist or revolutionary groups,
and the ASG and JI, on the other hand, as terrorist groups. This helps to support
the political and public perception that negotiated solutions might be found to
resolve the conflicts with the MILF and the CPP-NPA. This search for negotiated
solutions is threatened by the most negative impact of this reporting – the media’s
tendency to identify indigenous conflicts with the ‘war on terror’. Although for
the time being at least, the media is not firmly rooting these conflicts within
the ‘war on terror’. However it is unclear whether the media is making these
distinctions between the groups independently, or is just reflecting the views of
the government, which currently sees negotiations as the way to secure a lasting
peace with the CPP-NPA and the MILF. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the
full extent of the progress that the media has made since 2000, or whether it
continues to merely reflect the views of the government of the day.

Note

1 This refers to the bombs on commuter trains and train stations in the Spanish city of
Madrid in 2004, which killed nearly 200 people, al Qaeda was blamed for the attacks.