Philippine lawmakers vote for shutdown of top broadcaster
Source: Guardian/Reuters
Lawmakers in the Philippines have voted against the renewal of a 25-year franchise for the nation’s biggest broadcaster, ABS-CBN, ensuring a media conglomerate that has clashed with the country’s firebrand president stays off the air indefinitely.
A legislative committee overwhelmingly supported a house working group’s assessment that ABS-CBN was “undeserving of the grant of legislative franchise”, a decision likely to anger activists who say media freedom has come under sustained attack during the rule of President Rodrigo Duterte.
ABS-CBN has been on tenterhooks since Duterte took office in 2016, with the president repeatedly threatening to thwart its renewal bid, his anger stemming from its failure to air some of his paid election campaign commercials. It has since apologised.
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Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia head of Human Rights Watch, called it a “grievous assault on press freedom” not seen since the days of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/10/philippine-lawmakers-vote-shutdown-top-broadcaster-abs-cbn-rodrigo-duterte
Duterte is, of course, a Trump favourite.