Silent Assault: Multilevel Censorship as Media Repression in the Philippines

Abstract

This article examines media repression as experienced by independent media practitioners. It explores two cases of media repression through interviews: the termination of the radio program Ngayon Na, Bayan! (Right Now, People!) in 2006; and the censorship of Rights, a series of public service advertisements in 2007. State censorship through laws, review and regulatory boards, and the military, together with self-censorship among media practitioners due to pressures in the media industry, constitute multilevel media repression. The silencing of alternative voices is a form of everyday violence (Scheper-Hughes, 2003; Kleinman, 2003). As multilevel repression exposes the insecurity of a government in a state of crisis (Wieviorka 2003), a counter discourse to silence (Greene, 2003) is created in the process.