30/08/2026
The UP Journalism Club commemorates this National Press Freedom Day by recognizing that the nation is far from achieving a press free from impunity, fearmongering, and desensitization of misinformation within our country as attacks continue to persist from student publications to community journalists.
Recently, pages with the intention to red-tag UPLB Perspective have been propped up to vilify and harass the UP Los Baรฑos community through their posts. The content of said pages contains malicious accusations of the publicationโs activities as platforms for โrecruitment of terrorists.โ
According to an investigation from the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) in June 2026, these pages are part of an alleged network of Facebook-based entities created within early this year with the goal to circulate posts and comments on student publications, student councils and formations, that label them as breeding grounds of the CPP-NDF-NPA.
This broad attack even against student publications reflects how coordinated attacks on press freedom and freedom of expression can be. It is evident in our countryโs standing in the Reporters Without Bordersโ Press Freedom Index for this year which puts us in the 114th position.
A major factor on how we are labeled as having a โdifficultโ state of press freedom is how the justice system is used to target journalists who remain critical. Frenchie Mae Cumpio, the executive director of Eastern Visayas-based community news website Eastern Vista and Aksyon Radyo Tacloban host who focuses on human rights abuses in the region is still detained six years after her arrest. Her imprisonment mirrors those with other detainees where she was charged with bogus cases of โillegal possession of fi****msโ and โterrorism financing.โ On the latter part, the provisions of the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 were the basis of her terrorism finance case after her fi****ms charges were acquitted last January 22.
Beyond the legal front, the field of journalism remains violent in the country. For instance, RJ Ledesma, a writer and editor of Negros-based alternative news outfit Paghimutad was one of the slain in the Toboso Massacre last April. His recent reports cover the state of communities in northern Negros where renewable energy projects in the town resulted in mass displacement of farmers and their families. He was part of the Toboso 19, where up to this day, are continuously ridiculed through red-tagging posts online.
Returning back to the origin of the existence of a โNational Press Freedom Day,โ this supposedly honors the birth anniversary of Marcelo H. Del Pilar, a prominent writer of La Solidaridad and one of the key figures of the Illustrado movement. Ironically enough, this was signed fairly recently in 2020 by none other than former President Rodrigo Duterte. The same president who oversaw Cumpioโs unjust arrest and the same president who uttered โJust because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassinationโ shortly after his election in May 2016.
Even after another administration has passed, the environment fostered against journalists and media workers remains dangerous. The existence of a Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS), which was also created in the previous administration, did not slow down the attacks against the press. While President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. attempts to frame himself as a defender of press freedom in a statement during a luncheon with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP), this commitment remains in question as all of the injustices against journalists persists in his term.
Celebrating the freedom of the press should not be reduced to a legislated day for the sake of superficial recognition. All of these developments related to the press in the Philippines show that those in power either neglect or actively repress the rights of journalists. As time goes by, the call to defend press freedom remains relevant and it is us who shall heed it. The UP Journalism Club centers itself in its principles that a free press must be fought for beyond one singular celebration.
