The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemned lawyer Nicholas Kaufman after he described reporting on former president Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug campaign as “twisted, sensational and controlled by the powerful.”
According to NUJP, Kaufman disregards the sacrifices of journalists and photojournalists, including the “Night Crawlers,” who documented killings despite hesitation from some newsrooms.
“Media workers active during the government’s violent anti-narcotics campaign will attest that most corporate media managers and owners were in fact hesitant, if not outright afraid, to go against the popular ‘war’ that also had widespread support in both chambers of Congress,” NUJP said.
“It was only when the bodies began piling up and intrepid graveyard shift reporters and the ‘Night Crawlers’ insisted on covering and reporting that owners and news desks had to acknowledge the stories and the deaths,” the group added.
NUJP stressed that such coverage was in the public interest and sought justice for victims labeled as “drug personalities” who were killed without trial.
“The coverage that followed was in the public interest and in the interest of justice for people summarily identified as ‘drug personalities’ and killed without any semblance of trial.”
The Commission on Human Rights emphasized that thousands of killings were left uninvestigated, while Duterte’s own Department of Justice found irregularities in police operations.
NUJP accused Kaufman of reviving the long-disproven theory that photos of drug war victims were “staged,” saying this insults victims and undermines the work of journalists who reported despite risks to their safety and mental health.
“Kaufman is the one manufacturing lies. He echoed Duterte’s twisted logic, sensationalized his client’s achievements and attacked the truth-tellers,” NUJP concluded. (ZIA LUNA)
