Free information has never been Southeast Asia’s forte. In the region’s democracies, the press is now on the defensive. In the region’s less democratic countries, the space for independent media is quickly shrinking. In Cambodia, crackdown on the English-language media goes unchallenged as the country turns into a one-party state. In Myanmar, journalists go to prison for working on politically sensitive issues like violence against the Rohingyas. In the Philippines, a leading news website had its license revoked by a government with an increasingly authoritarian bent.
In the past, advocates of a free press in Southeast Asia could leverage the pro-democratic support of Western governments, especially the United States. Now, they are on their own. If anything, President Donald Trump’s complaints of ‘fake news’ have only strengthened the authoritarians’ hand. Furthermore, from lèse-majesté laws to unleashing thugs to intimidate journalists, or worse, to pressuring media owners and fostering ultranationalist minders on the internet, authoritarians in the region have an array of instruments to choose from when they want to stifle free information.
The story of Southeast Asia’s press freedom is the focus of this week’s first Spotlight article by Pamela Victor that first appeared on The ASEAN Post, a Malaysia-based media outfit. Victor describes how Trump’s ‘fake news’ attacks on US media have resonated well with the more domineering leaders in the region, adding one more problem to the besieged media sector. The writer also argues that only more media-literate and critical reader-citizens can serve as a strong base for independent media in the face of an increasingly combative government and the blurring of unbiased reporting by ‘fake news’.
The recent muzzling of Manila-based online news site Rappler is at the center of our second Spotlight article by Marites Vitug that first appeared on the Nikkei Asian Review. A former editor-at-large at Rappler, Vitug is well-placed to tell the story of the news site’s rise and fall. Efforts to curb free press in the Philippines—said to be ordered directly from the Malacañang Palace—are a national challenge for a media ecosystem that has bloomed under the post-Marcos presidencies. Filipinos were rightly proud of their rambunctious press; if the campaign against the free press continues, the next generation of Filipinos may only read about that legacy in their history books.
Citizens in Southeast Asia should be more wary of these developments against free information. Whatever the defects of a rambunctious press—and many there are—democracies cannot stand over the long term without the consent citizens give to their government that arise from knowing what the facts really are. Without free information, the future of that democracy-strengthening process will quickly darken.
