Off the Air, Still Losing Ground

Six years ago, Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration killed the ABS-CBN franchise. After years of publicly vowing to block its renewal, it led a House committee vote in July 2020 to deny the network's franchise, a decision many observers traced to his grievance over unaired 2016 campaign ads; and now that one of the Philippines’ mainstream media corporations is already off the air, its newsrooms emptied and its audience scattered, the press is still losing ground. 

The ABS-CBN Corporation announced layoff plans of about 200 employees on September 15 over weaker advertising and consumer spending—another round of setbacks for the employees of the network as it continues to recover from the 2020 shutdown and to keep up with the ever-growing trend in the digital market. But the toll goes beyond the employees: each round of retrenchment thins the ranks of journalists, producers, and crew who sustain independent reporting, and a press with fewer people and less capacity is less able to hold power accountable. 

What looms over the retrenchment is not only the decline in the workforce or employees losing jobs; it is also what the economy speaks for press freedom. A media organization weakened by shrinking revenue has fewer resources to fund investigative work, defend itself against legal and political pressure, or refuse the demands of advertisers and owners. That is where financial fragility becomes political vulnerability. 

Two hundred employees from the network represent 7 percent of the company’s workforce. The fear of unemployment harms more than media workers’ livelihoods but also shifts public discourse to regress amidst the rise of disinformation. These layoffs do not only threaten the security of media workers but also the public’s capacity to think together. Fewer journalists mean fewer verified reports that may result in thinner public debate, and thinner public debate leaves a public more exposed to disinformation.

While the network points fingers at the Middle East conflict, high inflation, and low economic growth, a hidden thumb points back at the Duterte administration for shutting down its profitable broadcast business in 2020. After all, the economic pressures that drove this year’s layoffs arrived after the shutdown had already stripped the company of its free-TV franchise and its profitable broadcast business, leaving it far less able to withstand them.

The retrenchment was not at all a shocking scene, as the country’s once biggest media conglomerate laid-off roughly 5,000 of its workforce six years ago after closing related units, such as the Regional Network Group (RNG) and other subsidiaries. All these livelihood means lost just to recover a pivotal loss in consequence to then administration’s war on drugs reportage and failing to air political advertisements for Duterte’s campaign. 

The ghost of ABS-CBN’s shutdown, still being felt six years later, shows how easily it is to undo the livelihood of Filipinos by a 70-11 House committee vote. Thousands of Filipinos losing jobs from a memory so long does not only mean thousands of labor force lost; it also means thousands of media workers lost. 

This continuous pain for the Philippine media injures the long fight for press freedom and effective journalism. Now that authoritarian governments can see that an outright ban creates martyrs and international headlines, while starving a newsroom of its license, revenue, and people creates neither; it should reveal the question: is the Philippine press just that vulnerable to keep hanging by a thread?

On September 18, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) announced its closure after 37 years of operations—effective at the end of the month. The decision was due to the financial challenges faced by the center. It is another loss for the media as its own watchdog ceases to function, and with it goes the independent monitoring, critiquing, and ethics advocacy that held newsrooms to account.

As media institutions fall one after another, it becomes clear: money becomes an illusionary pillar believed to hold freedom and platform among the press. The tragedy in these events is that media consumers, the public, and the laborers inside these companies are the ones bearing the blow. Workers are laid off as the holiday season approaches, making survival even harder in a climate where it is a struggle to access basic necessities.

ABS-CBN and other media companies need to be reminded of their commitment to provide affected workers with full benefits and support. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and other press organizations must monitor layoff proceedings and continue to uphold responsible journalism despite the impending absence of CMFR. It is not only about protecting jobs; it also shows whether cuts fall unevenly on investigative or critical units, whether workers are treated fairly, and how much reporting capacity the public is losing. 

Government agencies like the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) must also pursue supporting efforts for displaced network journalists by providing reemployment assistance, retraining in digital journalism, and livelihood aid. When journalists who cannot find comparable work leave the profession, they take with them the expertise upon which a free press depends on. Supporting them is therefore not merely relief for the unemployed but an investment in press freedom instead. 

A network’s affair should worry the public for reasons that go beyond the franchise itself. Regulation is a legitimate government function, but when it becomes the lever that decides whether a major newsroom survives, the damage falls on the public's access to independent news, not just on one company.

This is not the end of journalism. There is no death in journalism but reinvention, and freedom of the press is yet to be met with a corruptless state. The Philippines should adopt a broader understanding of press freedom, one that recognizes threats beyond arrests and physical closures. The systematic weakening of the institutional capacity that sustains journalism is equally a form of erosion. 

Six years later, the Philippine media still mourns the death of a newsroom franchise that led to thousands of jobs lost. Critics called it a political vendetta that undermined both press freedom and the state’s duty to protect labor. And now that one of the Philippines’ mainstream media remains off the air, the press must stand firm and refuse to lose any more ground.

Article: Shane Elijah Dinglasan

Illustrator: Bea Bianca Rivero