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[av_heading heading=’Rappler CEO, Trillanes see Palace hand in SEC order’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY PRINCE GOLEZ and DARYL LASAFIN
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January 16, 2018
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MANILA – Rappler believes President Rodrigo Duterte may have influenced the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to revoke its license to operate, according to its chief executive officer and executive editor, Maria Ressa.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, on the other hand, had no qualms pointing to Duterte as the one behind the order for the multimedia news website to shut down.
Told that Malacañang denied any hand in the SEC resolution, Ressa told CNN Philippines’ program “The Source” on Tuesday, “It’s not true. That’s not what we have heard.”
Rappler was “liable for violating the constitutional and statutory Foreign Equity Restriction in Mass Media” for getting funding from Omidyar Network, an investment company owned by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, the SEC said in a Jan. 11 resolution.
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte had “nothing to do” with the SEC order. “The President did not even appoint a majority of that commission,” said Roque.
But Ressa said the decision was one with “obvious political interference.” Citing information they received, she said someone ran after the SEC for a decision adverse to Rappler after the Office of the Solicitor General sought an investigation into the news company’s ownership.
It was “a clear attempt by Duterte to muzzle the few remaining independent media outfits in the country,” Trillanes said in a statement.
The SEC ruling, the senator said, sent a “chilling” warning to the Philippine media to tow the government line.
ON PRESS FREEDOM
In an article explaining the SEC order and what it could mean for press freedom, media group VERA Files stated that, “It is very hard not to see the SEC decision revoking Rappler’s registration against the backdrop of the present administration’s attacks against the media.”
VERA Files pointed out that it was the Office of the Solicitor General that ordered the investigation into Rappler in December 2016.
Using direct quotes from the President, it also cited several instances where Duterte railed against the media, calling for a media boycott and saying “kill journalism,” and “savaging” a newspaper and a broadcast network.
Roque insisted that the SEC decision was “not about infringement on the freedom of the press.” He said the issue was about the “compliance [with] 100-percent Filipino ownership and management of mass media.”
He also asserted the SEC’s authority to set restrictions on the ownership and management of mass media entities.
Ressa, in a news conference on Monday after news about the decision broke, said they were denied due process.
The SEC “didn’t go through due process. The en banc, essentially, issued an order to shut us down without giving us the opportunity to respond to what the special panel found. It wasn’t a normal process,” she said./PN
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