The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines takes exception to lawyer Nicholas Kaufman’s characterization of coverage of Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ as twisted, sensational and “controlled by the powerful and the politically-influential.”

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.

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 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, itself accused of supporting drug syndicates and criminals because of its work, had pointed out as early as 2017 that “thousands of deaths related to the ongoing campaign against illegal drugs have been documented and yet no one has been prosecuted” as it pointed to government failure of fulfill its obligations to investigate them.

Even Duterte’s own Department of Justice, in a review it conducted on just a handful of cases that the police allowed them to check, found irregularities and lapses of protocol in the operations.

In defending his client, Kaufman resurrects long debunked conspiracy theories that photos of the “drug war” dead were staged, a lie that dishonors the victims and diminishes the work of colleagues who covered them at the risk of their safety and their mental health.

Kaufman is the one manufacturing lies.

He echoed Duterte’s twisted logic, sensationalized his client’s achievements and attacked the truth-tellers.