The Australian media's failure to cover the Philippines

From Australian Broadcasting Network (ABC) Online (Sep 7): The Australian media's failure to cover the Philippines



Image: Soldiers on the move in Mindanao. (Matthew Thompson)

The War on Terror has dominated headlines in Australia for nearly 15 years—so why doesn't the media cover the Philippines, a country in our backyard with a major Muslim insurgency that has links to Islamic State, with more depth and nuance? Matthew Thompson takes a look.

In the age of the perplexing and seemingly unending War on Terror, nothing quite lays bare the determined inadequacy of the Australian press in exploring and explaining our world like journalism's all-but-token avoidance of the Philippines.

The September 11 apocalypse that provoked a cascade of western military and intelligence adventures was planned in the Philippines. So was the 1993 World Trade Center attack that failed to topple the towers. Many of the bombers that killed hundreds in Bali, including scores of Australians, in 2002 and 2005, lived, were trained and trained others in the Philippines.

The most recent publicised kidnapping for ransom of an Australian happened in the Philippines, when Warren Rodwell was held on the island of Basilan by the Abu Sayyaf Group, a guerrilla syndicate started with al Qaeda seed money that has lately pledged allegiance to ISIS.

A Malaysian bomb-master named Zulkifli who worked with the Abu Sayyaf and was on the command council of Jemaah Islamiyah, the perpetrators of the Bali bombings, was pinpointed in the Philippines in January by the US, who intercepted his phone and asked Filipino police commandos to go get him.

The cops—a unit the US had trained and that it trusted more than the far better-armed local military forces—did indeed shoot Zulkifli dead, but a staggering 44 police died with him in a massacre that sent shockwaves through the Philippines, sparking fighting that killed dozens more, displaced about 120,000 people and destabilised a long-negotiated and hugely important peace deal.

Needless to say, the Philippines' volatility, lawlessness and rebel-held domains could mean trouble throughout South East Asia and elsewhere with the jihadist Internationale always on the prowl for a lair.

But all this is just the faintest blip on the Australian media's radar and, by extension, public awareness. If the Philippines does draw the press pack it's invariably to grab shots and quotes after a typhoon.

Ten years ago, when I quit the Sydney Morning Herald in order to explore the world and its stories with the depth and nuance that reality demands, a senior writer advised me that I was being a bonehead.

'Mate, just stick to stereotypes—that's all people can handle,' he said. 'I'll give you some examples: covering Japan? Gadgets and sexual fetishes. Want to write about the Philippines? Disasters and Imelda Marcos' shoes. Maybe sex tourism. No one wants to hear anything else.'

Things can change in a decade, of course. Japanese coverage now swings between nuclear disasters and a national loss of libido, but that reporter's basic point is still evident. And it would be quite harmless if the downside was merely the perpetuation of our depressing ignorance of the complex world around us.

When our ignorance leads us to misread and misjudge a dangerous situation, however, the consequences of slim, shallow or non-existent reporting can be distressing and profoundly costly. The grisly debacle that was January's Filipino counter-terrorism raid is one example, with the US agents involved apparently oblivious to what everyone else in the region well knows: normally fractious Muslim communities will quickly set aside their differences to defend each other against outside forces. That is despite the US having battle and occupation experience in the Philippines dating back to 1898, when American troops moved in after buying the archipelago from Spain for US$20 million.

Here's another example: in 2002 then-president George W. Bush declared the Philippines to be one of three theatres in the War on Terror (the others being Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa), and sent thousands of troops on an non-combat advisory mission to help Filipino forces eradicate the Abu Sayyaf in the country's south.

The mission lasted 12 years, only wrapping up in 2014. I first visited the islands in 2005, when the commitment was still young and the area was dangerous as hell, with the Abu Sayyaf carrying out kidnappings, ambushes, bombings and armed assaults.

My most recent visit was late last year, a few months after the Americans pulled out. It was dangerous as hell, with the Abu Sayyaf carrying out kidnappings, ambushes, bombings and armed assaults.

When I asked to take a 25-minute drive out of a city, about 40 soldiers were sent to escort me, some wearing ski masks, and it was not certain that we would make it through unscathed.

So what did Operation Enduring Freedom Philippines achieve? As much as had been achieved when President Barack Obama oversaw the withdrawal of US forces from what he called a 'sovereign, stable and self-reliant' Iraq in 2011?

I haven't spent time in Iraq so I don't know how much goes unreported, but after a decade of repeatedly visiting the Philippines I am starting to gain an appreciation of the country and its joys and dramas. In more than just an academic sense, I have begun to recognise that waltzing into an unstable situation without a nuanced, humble, and heartfelt openness to local stories and conditions is to waltz in blind and blundering. It is to doom oneself to failed interventions. It is to be a dangerous fool.

With this in mind, when I went back to Basilan last year, I listened more than I ever have and found a problematic stability beneath the terrible instability. I found that for a hell of a lot of people outside 'let's move on' Australia, history is not events from the past and in the past, but rather a tide in play now.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-australian-medias-failure-to-cover-the-philippines/6751010