War on “the Probinsyano”: Will ABS-CBN Be Nationalized? Or Will Lopez Be Forced Out in Favor of a Political Favorite?

War on “the Probinsyano”: Will ABS-CBN Be Nationalized? Or Will Lopez Be Forced Out in Favor of a Political Favorite?

The leadership’s thrust to muzzle, repress or subjugate press freedom escalates. This time the administration is picking on a highly rated fiction series as a means to exercise controls over the industry.

From the Inquirer (November 18, 2018):

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Saturday denounced the portrayal of policemen in the popular TV series “Ang Probinsyano” and threatened to sue the show’s producers.

“I am dismayed at how ‘Ang Probinsyano’ depicts the [Philippine National Police]. They are intentionally sending a wrong message, which is demoralizing the ranks of the PNP,” Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said in a statement.

The administration is taking various measures to stop the show.

From the Inquirer (November 18, 2018)

The Philippine National Police (PNP) has ordered all its units to stop allowing the teleserye “Ang Probinsyano” from using their personnel, equipment, and facilities, following the show’s alleged negative portrayal of the agency.

“All units, offices, and personnel are advised to immediately refrain from assisting, to withdraw their support to the production of the said teleserye in terms of PNP resources like patrol cars, firearms, personnel, venues, and other items and gadgets being used in the teleserye,” Police Community Relations Director Eduardo Garado said in a memorandum dated Friday, Nov. 16, 2018.

From the CNN (November 16, 2018)

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Friday expressed dismay over a popular police drama's portrayal of the country's police force.

DILG Assistant Secretary and Spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said the government may look into possible legal action against ABS-CBN's "Ang Probinsyano" if the show does not change its plot anytime soon.

"We will seriously consider filing legal action and imposing sanctions including the prohibition on the use of PNP uniforms, properties and even using the acronym of the organization (PNP) if "Ang Probinsyano" continues with their grossly unfair and inaccurate portrayal of our police force," Malaya said in a statement Friday.

A week back, the Philippine President threatened the non-renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise

From the CNN (November 9, 2018)

President Rodrigo Duterte slammed TV network ABS-CBN anew, saying he would object to the renewal of its franchise.

In a speech Thursday during the ceremonial distribution of Certificates of Land Ownership Award to agrarian reform beneficiaries in Malay, Aklan, the President went on a tirade against the network and its chairman emeritus Gabby Lopez, saying they were thieves.

ABS-CBN's franchise is up for renewal in 2020, or two years before the end of Duterte's six-year term.

"Alam mo yung ginawa ng mga p*****g i*a kayo, ikaw Gabby. Inuna mo pa yung advertisement ni Trillanes na hindi ikaw. Pinaniraan ako ng mga bata, ay si Duterte killer yan. Sa batas, there was an injunction na hindi pwede yan kasi bawal na gamitin mo ang bata. And yet pumunta talaga kayo, went ahead with the show and made it public," he said.

[Translation: You know what you sons of b*****s did, you Gabby . You went ahead and showed Trillanes' advertisement. Children said, Duterte is a killer. There was an injunction in the law which said that was not allowed because it involved children. And yet you went ahead with the show and made it public.]

The administration has painted this to be an election issue. It could be, but it could be more.

Isn’t it a coincidence that the assault on Probinsyano occurred just as ABS-CBN reported a sharp drop in net income growth?

From the Inquirer (November 16, 2018)

Media giant ABS-CBN Corp. saw earnings drop in the nine months through September this year as revenue was relatively flat while costs increased.

From January to September 2018, ABS-CBN posted a net income of P1.48 billion, down almost 35 percent. Total revenue slid by 0.1 percent to P29.5 billion.

Advertising revenues, comprising 50.45% of the firm’s overall gross revenues, have contracted for two straight years (-2.83% in 2018, 16.42% in 2017).

The other major component of ABS-CBN’s revenues, the sale of services, which took up a 41.5% share of the total, have hardly been growing at all (+.72% 2018, +5.36% in 2017).

And because of the rapidly shrinking net income, ABS borrowed Php 7.8 billion over the period, as reported by its 3Q 17Q. Total debt now stands now at Php 28.25 billion or 96% of its 9-month revenues!

ABS-CBN’s fundamentals have decayed from mostly changes in market preferences. How much more when politics forces the issue?

Mr. Duterte’s recent actions against other media institutions critical of his administration provide a blueprint of the fate of ABS-CBN

Mr. Duterte laid siege on the Prietos of the Inquirer, forcing the latter to sell their stake in it to a crony in November 2017.

But the Prieto’s exit from the Inquirer hasn’t appeased Mr. Duterte. Not only has the Prietos been charged with tax evasion on their Dunkin Donuts franchise, but Mr. Duterte has also revived his plunder threat against them.

Accused by Mr. Duterte of peddling fake news, tax evasion case has been leveled against Rappler officials a week back. A year back, because Mr. Duterte charged Rappler as having been owned by Americans, the SEC revoked the media outfit’s incorporation papers, a ruling which the Court of Appeals upheld.

Such accounts bring us back to the misfortunes of the Probinsyano.

Do you know the likely effect of the closure of the Probinsyano to ABS-CBN?

Here is a clue…

"The Probinsyano" is one of the principal (if not the biggest) profit centers of ABS-CBN’s, unfortunately, declining revenue and income stream.

That said, should the show be taken off the air or have its popular plot vitiated, the debilitation of ABS-CBN will only accelerate!

Then what?

Will ABS-CBN be nationalized?

Or will the Lopez be forced out in place of whom?

Or, will ABS-CBN be added to the collection of trophies of a political favorite granted by the patron’s unrelenting conquest of the domestic economy?

Attachments area

War on Internet: Google will warn Users of State Sponsored Attacks

Hail Google. Google will warn their users of state sponsored privacy intrusions.

From Foreign Policies the Cable

UPDATE: A senior Senate aide confirmed that this evening he received a warning on his Gmail account that Google suspected he had been the target of a state-sponsored cyber attack.

Web giant Google is about to announce a new warning informing Gmail users when a specific type of attacker is trying to hijack their accounts -- governments and their proxies.

Later today, the company will announce a new warning system that will alert Gmail users when Google believes their accounts are being targeted by state-sponsored attacks. The new system isn't a response to a specific event or directed at any one country, but is part and parcel of Google's recent set of policy changes meant to allow users to protect themselves from malicious activity brought on by state actors. It also has the effect of making it more difficult for authoritarian regimes to target political and social activists by hacking their private communications.

"We are constantly on the lookout for malicious activity on our systems, in particular attempts by third parties to log into users' accounts unauthorized. When we have specific intelligence-either directly from users or from our own monitoring efforts-we show clear warning signs and put in place extra roadblocks to thwart these bad actors," reads a note to users by Eric Grosse, Google's vice president for security engineering, to be posted later today on Google's Online Security blog, obtained in advance by The Cable. "Today, we're taking that a step further for a subset of our users, who we believe may be the target of state-sponsored attacks."

When Google's internal systems monitoring suspicious internet activity, such as suspicious log-in attempts, conclude that such activities include the involvement of states or state-backed initiatives, the user will now receive the specialized, more prominent warning pictured above. The warning doesn't necessarily mean that a user's account has been hijacked, but is meant to alert users that Google believes a state sponsored attack has been attempted so they can increase their security vigilance.

Google wants to be clear they are not singling out any one government for criticism and that the effort is about giving users transparency about what is going on with their accounts, not about highlighting the malicious actions of foreign states.

Read the rest here

War on Internet: Anonymous will do a Wikileaks this December

The war on the internet continues.

Despite a string of legal harassment suit waged against activists like Wikileaks, internet activism will persist to haunt governments and their cronies.

Another activist group called the Anonymous announced that they will do a Wiki-leaks expose this December.

From Personal Liberty.com (hat tip Sovereign Man)

The global “hacktivist” syndicate Anonymous wants people all over the world to expose evidence of corruption and injustice by leaking documents to which they have access.

In a recently posted video, the group urges anyone who has access to evidence of corporate or government wrongdoing to purchase a USB drive and document the evidence for publication on the Internet.

“Imagine you purchase a USB drive. Imagine you take it to your work place. Imagine you collect evidence of illegality and corruption. Imagine together we expose all lies. Imagine we leak it all,” scrolls across the screen in a recent video posted by the group.

The initiative, dubbed Project Mayhem 2012, will take place over the 10-day period from Dec. 12 to Dec. 21, during which the video claims “the World will see an unprecedented amount of Corporate, Financial, Military and State leaks that will have been secretly gathered by millions of CONSCIENTIOUS citizens, vigilantes, whistle blowers and insiders worldwide.”

The group claims to be in the process of developing a Wikileaks-style platform called TYLER where the information can be anonymously posted.

Video here.

Which Social Media Networks will Stand Beside You From Governments

The Electronic Frontier Foundation conducted a study to see which of the 18 major internet companies will stand beside their users against governments intrusions.

The introduction from the study at the EFF.org

The Electronic Frontier Foundation examined the policies of 18 major Internet companies — including email providers, ISPs, cloud storage providers, and social networking sites — to assess whether they publicly commit to standing with users when the government seeks access to user data. We looked at their terms of service, privacy policies, and published law enforcement guides, if any. We also examined their track record of fighting for user privacy in the courts and whether they’re members of the Digital Due Process coalition, which works to improve outdated communications law. Finally, we contacted each of the companies with our conclusions and gave them an opportunity to respond and provide us evidence of improved policies and practices. These categories are not the only ways that a company can stand up for users, of course, but they are important and publicly verifiable.

Their conclusion…

Readers of this year’s annual privacy and transparency report should be heartened, as we are, at the improvements major online service providers over the last year. While there remains room for improvement in areas such as the policies of location service providers, certain practices — like publishing law enforcement guidelines and regular transparency reports — are becoming standard industry practice. And we are seeing a growing, powerful movement that comprises civil liberties groups as well as major online service providers to clarify outdated privacy laws so that there is no question government agents need a court-ordered warrant before accessing sensitive location data, email content and documents stored in the cloud.

Read the entire report here

World Press Freedom Rankings: Philippines 140th

Reporters without borders recently released the Press Freedom index.

The press release goes…

This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.

Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.

It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.

This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011.

Read the rest here. I didn’t read through the entire report though as to how the press freedom is treated or measured in terms of the cyberspace or the netizens.

But in many instance where many (in the local community) seem to believe that there has been much press freedom in the Philippines, the rankings (140th out of 179) would give them a disappointment.

Press freedom represents an indispensable or sine qua non element for civil liberties, a representative government, and especially, for market economies (economic freedom or capitalism)

As the great Ludwig von Mises explains,

A free press can exist only where there is private control of the means of production. In a socialist commonwealth, where all publication facilities and printing presses are owned and operated by the government, there cannot be any question of a free press. The government alone determines who should have the time and opportunity to write and what should be printed and published. Compared with the conditions prevailing in Soviet Russia, even Tsarist Russia, retrospectively, looks like a country of a free press. When the Nazis performed their notorious book auto-da-fes, they exactly conformed to the designs of one of the great socialist authors, Cabet.

As all nations are moving toward socialism, the freedom of authors is vanishing step by step. From day to day it becomes more difficult for a man to publish a book or an article, the content of which displeases the government or powerful pressure groups. The heretics are not yet "liquidated" as in Russia nor are their books burned by order of the Inquisition. Neither is there a return to the old system of censorship. The self-styled progressives have more efficient weapons at their disposal. Their foremost tool of oppression is boycotting authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, printers, advertisers, and readers.