His Excellency Joseph Estrada
President
Malacańang Palace
Manila
Philippines

Vienna, 17 September 1999

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI) is most concerned about the ongoing advertising boycott of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, allegedly initiated by your administration.

We are informed that in July a number of Philippine movie producers withdrew their advertisements from the Inquirer, the largest-circulation paper in the country. They were quoted as saying that in a meeting on 8 July you had asked them to withdraw their advertisements from the paper in return for tax breaks for their industry.

Also in July, the Metro Pacific Group, which includes the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Smart, Piltel, and the Port Bonifacio Development Corp., cancelled its advertising in the Inquirer. The Metro Pacific Group is controlled by Manuel Pangilinan, who reportedly has close connections to your administration.

We understand that three large government institutions, the Land Bank, the Philippine National Bank and the Social Security System, have also withdrawn their ads from the newspaper.

These advertising boycotts, which appear to be a response to a number of critical articles in the Inquirer about your family, friends and administration officials, are only the most recent actions in what is regarded by many journalists as a campaign of economic intimidation and harassment against critical newspapers in general and the Inquirer in particular. In April, journalists at the Inquirer claimed that they had been pressured by the presidential palace to downplay a story on a textbook purchasing scandal, while two Inquirer reporters were barred from presidential press briefings on several occasions in July. In June, you announced that you would no longer field questions from print reporters, preferring instead to speak exclusively via television and radio.

IPI, the global network of editors and media executives, believes that these actions represent a serious threat to press freedom in The Philippines, a country which has had until now perhaps the freest press in Asia. We therefore urge Your Excellency to publicly disavow any support for the advertising boycott of the Inquirer and to do everything in your power to ensure an immediate and unconditional end to the boycott. We further urge that you do not to resort to censorship, direct or indirect, in your dealings with the media.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director