Media Ownership in the Philippines

In the Philippines, media is mostly controlled by those people whom we call “tycoons”, that is by wealthy and powerful persons or families in business or industry. The Philippine government owns just one television network, a couple of radio stations and a newspaper and all the rest are already owned by these wealthy and powerful people. Thus, the media, in all its aspects is controlled by the private sector in my country.

Since the American period in the 1920s, the mass media in the Philippines have been dominated by individual business and political interests. In the Marcos era, the President’s cronies owned and controlled the media. Their control ended as soon as Corazon Aquino took over power from Marcos in 1989. Dozens of new newspapers were set up, TV and radio empires returned from exile to reclaim their properties which were confiscated by the Marcos regime. The old order re-emerged; powerful families again saw the media as their domain. The majority owners of the most influential daily, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, for example, include real estate and food manufacturing interests. Manila Bulletin owner Emilio Yap has interests in shipping and other ventures. The two biggest media networks are owned by companies of wealthy families. ABS-CBN is owned by the Lopez family and the GMA network by the Gozon-Duavit-Jimenez family. ABS-CBN is a multimedia company that has 33 TV stations all over the country, 20 FM and nine AM radio stations, and subsidiaries and affiliates in video/audio postproduction, film production and distribution, and audio recording and distribution. It runs a cable TV network and is also a cable TV and Internet provider. Furthermore it owns a number of magazines and printing press.

The GMA network is also a multimedia company, and has subsidiaries and affiliates in film production and distribution, music and video production, radio and the Internet.

Media in the Philippines is a monopoly of some rich families who are involved in various businesses all over the country and they are the ones in control of media. It is true that… “I soldi, il denaro controllano i media.” There are many disadvantages of this monopoly but somehow they have been responsible of the development of media in the Philippines, maybe without them media would not have been the same as it is now. And maybe without them or their support, media would not have developed well.