This report seeks to highlight the media landscape in the Philippines focusing on newspaper-state parallelism in relation to the U.S. Presidential election in 2024. It will provide the context in which narrative of friendship and alliance of the two countries underpinned the news reports on the U.S. elections.
The U.S. presidential election comes at a time when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration is in its second year and has considered itself an ally of the United States. Marcos’ friendly gestures toward President Joe Biden’s administration suggest that the Philippines can rely on the U.S.’s help over South China Sea territorial dispute with China. This foreign policy stance is a departure from that of President Rodrigo Duterte, who was friendlier with China and critical of the U.S. from 2016 to 2022. He called it an independent foreign policy, but it was generally considered a pivot to China. Marcos Jr. publicly conveyed a distrust towards China, his recognition of the U.S. as a strategic partner and key defense player in the regional security of Asia Pacific.
The Philippines, as a former colony of the U.S., maintains close ties with any American president, due to their mutual economic and defense interests. The Philippines receives substantial support from the U.S. to spur economic growth in energy, transportation, and semi-conductors (Poling, n.d.). Media reports on the defense ties tended to favor the U.S. over China portrayed in media reports as the aggressor and a bully in the South China Sea.
In the past ten years, the country’s media industry experienced a decline in public trust, decrease of earnings, government’s disdain for independent reporting and the proliferation of disinformation and false narratives. News organizations’ desire to become economically viable resorted to tuning down hard-hitting reports by shifting to stories that could earn the favor of economic elites whose political presence also looms large. Media organizations try to maintain a competitive edge by monitoring what’s trending and viral on social media and turning them into news. In turn, journalists present themselves as a non-partisan players in the information ecosystem and hospitable to a diversity of ideas, economic interests, and political tendencies. Media system operates on a belief that it can stay in the middle, which actually reveals its fear and anxiety of a further slide in media organization’s income and audience’s share.
The political leanings of media groups in the Philippines can be determined by their ownership and its economic, political, and social orientation (VERA Files, 2023). The two broadsheets The Manila Bulletin and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, will be examined in this study to determine the extent through which their content aligned with the Philippine government and American government and in reporting about the U.S. presidential elections. Both broadsheets have been historically involved in demonstrating reactive discourses in stories that support administration and opposition candidates. Their proactive discourses meanwhile are shaped by the ownership of both institutions, having links to those in power, or its editorial staff belonging to a generation that was harassed by the Marcos Sr. dictatorship. The country’s media are controlled by a handful of conglomerates and influential families whose political and economic interests tend to favor the ruling group. Among the owners of big media organizations are religious organizations, represented by their self-styled religious leaders who openly endorse and support politicians during elections (VERA Files, 2023; CMFR Staff, 2025).
Journalists in the Philippines are aware of the Constitutionally-mandated freedom of the press and expression that guarantees that they can be an independent monitor of power. Their understanding of the media’s watchdog role in strengthening democracy is influenced by American journalistic norms and ethical precepts that Filipino journalists were exposed to and have considered good journalism practice. Trends in American journalism, like investigative journalism, the documentary genre, data journalism, and fact-checking and verification, were also embraced by Filipino journalists. Media independence is also what many practitioners wanted to enjoy, but elite ownership, political interference, media safety concerns, and precarity prevent its full exercise. This means that assertions of media independence undermine the power of elite media.
Given the above conditions, if the Philippine media is assessed by its relationship to the state and the implication of such reporting on the U.S. elections, it could be one of low to high parallelism. The latter means that the diverse discourse of media is mixed and there is less reliance and alliance to the government. Despite the presence of some pro-government news organizations, they cannot really command a monopoly of narratives. Independent news organizations can also deliver alternative stories and viewpoints. The diversity of political orientation of the news organization and journalists allowed the contestation of discourses from the government, leading to low parallelism in the Philippine Daily Inquirer because of the presence of mixed and contesting discourses in the media. The Manila Bulletin will be examined for high parallelism because of its tendency of accommodating statements and discourses from the government.
References
CMFR Staff. (2023). Government ’s role in the spread of disinformation. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. https://cmfr-phil.org/in-context/government-s-role-in-the-spread-of-disinformation/
CMFR Staff. (2025). Media points to politics underlying INC’s ‘Peace’ Rally. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. https://cmfr-phil.org/media-ethics-responsibility/journalism-review/media-points-to-politics-underlying-incs-peace-rally/
Congressional Research Service. (2022). U. S. -Philippine relations and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ’s election [Insight]. U.S. Congress. https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2022-06-13_IN11954_8d83de762fddc9d4d5befda11da2cf39779803d4.pdf
Misalucha-Willoughby, C. (2014). From Entrepreneur to Saboteur: How the Philippines Won and Lost the South China Sea on Social Media. In A. Arugay & J. Encinas-Franco (Eds.), Games, Changes, and Fears: The Philippines from Duterte to Marcos Jr. (pp. 59–83). ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.
Poling, J. Q., Gregory B. (n.d.). U. S. Investment in the Philippines: The next era of economic partnership & opportunity. Retrieved 13 April 2025, from https://features.csis.org/us-philippines-economic-partnership
VERA Files. (2023). Media Ownership Monitor. Media Ownership Monitor; VERA Files. https://philippines.mom-gmr.org/en/media/