CAGAYAN DE ORO — A journalists’ group debunked claims that media coverage during the Duterte administration’s bloody anti-illegal drugs campaign was “twisted and sensationalized.”
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) reacted to lawyer Nicholas Kaufman’s attack on the members of the press in his opening statement on the first day of Duterte’s confirmation of charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on February 23.
Kaufman said that Duterte’s use of words offended world leaders and it allegedly started in the media, which he claimed was “controlled by the powerful and the politically influential.”
He claimed that the media prioritized readers’ preference over factual context by highlighting “salacious” content.
NUJP stressed that most corporate media leaders were hesitant to pursue stories related to Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign until the insistence of intrepid graveyard shift reporters and the “Night Crawlers,” as well as with the increasing number of fatalities.
The group cited an earlier statement of the state-run Commission on Human Rights (CHR) which acknowledged that no one had been prosecuted following the documentation of thousands of drug-related deaths. CHR said that this reflected the government’s failure to act.
NUJP said that even the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Duterte regime found irregularities when forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun presented to the DOJ her findings in some cases she examined.
“Kaufman is the one manufacturing lies,” the journalists’ group said.
The British-Israeli lawyer also called the photographs published by news media organizations that documented drug war killings and grieving families “carefully crafted to shock the conscience and to sway the emotions.”
NUJP said that this move by Kaufman dishonors the victims and demeans the work of journalists who took the risk to cover dangerous assignments.
“He echoed Duterte’s twisted logic, sensationalized his client’s achievements and attacked the truth-tellers,” NUJP said. (DAA)
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