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WHILE election laws seeking to ensure equal opportunity among candidates are in place, much of the airtime and print-ad space in this year’s campaign still ended up getting…

In the bustling offshore gambling industry in the Philippines today, a conservative estimate of 100,000 people work. About 90 percent of them are mainland Chinese.

The biggest recipient of Chinese foreign direct investments in the Philippines these days is the online or offshore gambling industry.

WHEN PROVIDING Official Development Assistance or ODA, Western donors typically require the recipient states to adhere to international political norms, such as the ratification of…

RICHARD JAVAD Heydarian, a resident commentator of GMA Network, has repeatedly pointed out that China has fooled the Philippines into giving up the South China Sea in exchange for…

THE YEAR 2019 marks the second decade of Indonesian media’s reform era. Although strongman Soeharto stepped down as president of Indonesia in 1998, it was only in 1999 that reforms…

THE ROUGH and tumble world of politics is supposed to be the territory of male journalists in Indonesia, but many of their female counterparts say they are not only being assigned…

TIMOR LESTE’S ranking in the latest press-freedom index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) leaped by 11 places from the previous year, but those on the ground do not feel any…

THE ABSENCE of independent media and shrinking civic space have effectively deprived the citizens of Laos of timely and qualitative information, including those that are critical…

IT WOULD be almost impossible to discuss media freedom in Vietnam without first reviewing the country’s political situation over the past year.

THE MEDIA landscape in Cambodia has dramatically changed over the past two years. Today there is a shortage of independent, impartial, and rigorous news in Cambodia.

IN 2018 and early 2019, media freedom and the right to free expression came under sustained pressure in the Kingdom of Cambodia.

SINGAPORE’S media industry has long been tightly controlled by the government. This is unlikely to change in 2019; in fact, new legislation is expected that could further curb…

IT WAS April Fool’s Day when it was finally tabled for its first reading in Parliament, but the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill (POFMA) is no laughing…

IN APRIL 2018, during its last Parliamentary sitting as Government, the Barisan Nasional rushed through a law designed, according to its supporters, to curb the spread of “fake…

SHORTLY AFTER Malaysia’s historic 9 May 2018 elections, a new feeling of freedom had swept across the country, and even the most jaded of journalists were giddy with excitement…

IN DECEMBER 2018, Myanmar’s Minister for Information Pe Myint gave lie to global reports that offered a grim prognosis of press freedom in the former pariah state.

IT HAS just a little more than a year before its five-year term ends, but Myanmar’s ruling National League of Democracy (NLD) still has a lot of promises left unfulfilled.

WITH STILL no new government as of early May 2019, free speech in Thailand continues to be restricted by special laws imposed by the military junta, officially known as the…

POLITICAL FREEDOM and civil liberties are in a downward spiral globally. Democracy is not only in retreat, but is under assault in Southeast Asia.

BY ALL indications, President Rodrigo R. Duterte has no love lost for independent and critical media.