Crackdown

If only to rub salt on an open wound, Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) “offered” Rappler founder Maria Ressa a job in her blog following the revocation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the online media outlet’s registration.

Those covering the Malacañang beat know only too well how Uson issued a memo asking her boss Martin Andanar, a former broadcaster, to review and possibly include Rappler under her social media wing since she believed then that Rappler was a social media blog and not an online news outlet.

Thanks to SEC’s decision to revoke Rappler’s certificate of incorporation, Uson can “magnanimously” call on her boss to include the online media outlet under her social media wing on legal grounds which Rappler wants to contest in the courts.

The fight is definitely far from over as far as Rappler’s right to operate as an online media outlet is concerned, but it does send a strong signal to all national and local media outlets about the Duterte administration’s determination to silence anyone and anything remotely critical of its policies and programs.

In revoking Rappler’s certificate of incorporation, the SEC claimed that the Philippine Deposit Receipts (PDR) sold by Rappler Holdings to a fund created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, were fraudulent and violated the Constitutional provisions against foreign ownership of media outlets.

The online media outlet had insisted that it has complied with all the requirements set under the Constitution and that the PDRs bought by the foreign investor isn’t tantamount to foreign ownership, which the SEC and now Solicitor General Jose Calida insisted was the case with Rappler.

But President Rodrigo Duterte already made his intentions clear when he denounced criticism on his bloody war on drugs from mainstream media by questioning Rappler’s ownership in his State of the Nation Address (Sona).

Thus, the SEC decision on Rappler is but a broadside in what many in the media industry see as a war of attrition launched by the Duterte administration and its allies against critics and the mainstream media.

Despite the Palace’s insistence that it had nothing to do with the SEC decision and it along with its apologists would do all it can to persuade the public to believe otherwise, it need not distance itself from this development for the public to know the real score behind Rappler’s plight.

If it’s not the SEC, then there are other instrumentalities like Congress, where the Duterte administration holds a super majority, that can silence and pressure media outlets into submission.

While most, if not all in the media industry had closed ranks and voiced support to Rappler’s continued operation, the public should also be made aware and persuaded to “hold the line” for press freedom.