A third way to control the media is by arm-twisting media owners who are vulnerable to government pressure because they own businesses that are subject to official regulation or depend on government favors in order to survive. Nearly all of those who own media companies in the Philippines today are families who run big business houses. Newspapers have been used by their owners to promote their businesses, put down their rivals, even to contest the results of public biddings in which the press proprietors lost. Media proprietors have tended to take politically safe positions, discouraging reports or expos s that will incur the ire of government. Because business in this country is often subject to whimsical regulation, and because the success of business here is often determined by who your friends are rather than how well you have invested your money, newspaper owners who run business empires are vulnerable to government pressure.
Ownership is the true chink in the armor of the mighty press.
And it is a credit to President Estrada's perceptiveness that he has realized this so early in his term. Forums like these help and so do other ways of informing the public about the problems. Rallies and statements make a lot of noise and drum up interest in the issue of media muzzling. But these are not enough. A free press needs to be buttressed by much more than the constitution and the law.