Philippines’ Duterte: from war on drugs to war on media?
A row with Rappler raises fears the strongman leader has his sights on setting the news agenda
It wasn’t hard to grasp why the Filipino president was so angry. Just a day earlier, on January 15, Rappler’s licence had been revoked in a move the Committee to Protect Journalists labelled a “grave affront to Philippine press freedom”.
Duterte might well have expected that would be the end of Rappler’s sniping, yet here it was, back again and in full voice, with a hard-hitting investigation targeting Duterte’s right-hand man, Christopher ‘Bong’ Go, who it accused of improperly lobbying on behalf of a South Korean firm chasing a 15.5-billion-peso (HK$2.4 billion) warship procurement project.
The timing of the article must have seemed particularly galling for a strongman leader who has done little to disguise his contempt for a site long critical of his administration.
