“Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch.” Rodrigo Duterte’s inauguration speech on 30 June 2016 set the tone for the rest of his mandate: unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom.
In the six years that Rodrigo Duterte led the country, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working. Among them wasJesus Yutrago Malabanan,shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war forReuters. Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists. The most prominent victim wasMaria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news siteRappler, who faced anorchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.
Media outlets critical of President Duterte’s authoritarian excesses were systematically muzzled: the country’s leading television network,ABS-CBN, wasforced to shut down;Rappler and Maria Ressafaced repeated lawsuits; and a businessman close to the presidenttook over the country's leading newspaper, thePhilippine Daily Inquirer, raising concerns over its editorial independence.