Month: November 2017

Media literacy 101: the alternative press and media

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The phrase “alternative press” gained currency in the last years of the Marcos terror regime, when Jose Burgos’ Malaya, We Forum, and other newspapers, magazines and news agencies were published to provide Filipinos and the rest of the world the information about human rights violations, environmental issues, the conflict in the South, the state of the economy, and other issues of public concern that the dominant, government-regulated press and media could not and would not provide.
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The U.S. Trump card

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The United States has announced that President Donald Trump will take up human rights issues in the Philippines with President Rodrigo Duterte in their one-on-one meeting sometime during the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit this November. It’s hardly likely that the meeting with Trump will result in any immediate change in the state of compliance with human rights standards of the Duterte regime. But Trump’s bringing them up now is a reminder that those issues can be used later when it suits US interests.
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