The State, the Media, and the Repression of Human Rights

As the social space comprises a field of social antagonisms, so the media, as a whole, constitutes a sphere of struggle for the representation of social reality. Both fields are sites of contending discourses – the discourse of the dominant and the discourse of the dominated. The construction and presentation of reality are always relative on the person’s position within her/his field of profession and position within the field of society. Thus, when a person constructs a fact, the person’s relationship to the social world is being repeated. Either the constructed reality will serve the purpose of reinforcing the ruling discourse or will serve as an instrument to articulate the suppressed discourse.

It is noteworthy how the local documentary film collective and other forms of alternative journalism are breaking with the mainstream discourse of media, taking part in the politics of truth, and representing what the doxa of the mainstream media has been repressing. What these independent media agents are presenting about the society’s immediate condition are rarely seen or heard on the commercial broadcast media. Why? Because it is against the doxa of the latter to deal with the issue of political struggles and of state repression.

From a personal observation, political killings and abductions are simply presented and labelled by most radio/television news agencies as individual, unrelated cases, which in reality are widespread and patterned. This is, on one hand, sensible since the major television networks and radio stations are under the monopoly of elite families and corporations. The latter are largely influenced and protected by the State. Thus, by that type of media ownership, they serve the purpose of containing the system by diverting the attention of the larger public from the concrete reality of state repression, increasing poverty and class inequality, to the fantasies of civilian life (such as the fantasy of social mobility). Neferti Tadiar notes that democracy has never existed in our society. The kind of democracy that we have is deceitful, founded on the codes of fantasy in the West – consumer freedom, for instance – which enable the ruling class to maintain its hegemony.

These are the kind of media the State needs in order to survive amidst the current political crisis besetting it. Media are expected to project the government positively and depict social reality from the latter’s position. Any output that would be perceived by the administration as against its (the State’s) standard and a threat to its power are categorized as destabilizing schemes.

Even after the Proclamation 1017 was uplifted, more and more civilians including the members of progressive groups, unaffiliated individuals, human rights advocates, journalists are being killed, abducted, or subjected to arbitrary detentions. The State, desperate to maintain its power, is attempting to sow a culture of fear among the people by making these repressive acts – extrajudicial killings and abductions – explicit in its all-out-war policy against the Left in this country. And if the media agents will continue to be cowed by the containment strategies of the State, truth presentation will always be at stake, distorting or destroying it to secure the State’s survival.

In fact, media have been successful in fulfilling the tasks of serving as a “supplement” to the State to fill the desire to have a firm grip on power and complete control over its constituents (the present administration, well-aware of its illegitimacy and the increasing unrest of the people, has sensed its impending downfall, so another “supplement” or “point de capiton” is needed – i.e. the media – to help avert this perceived event); and as a “screen” to the concrete social reality to make it appear more acceptable to the people, and thus, help them live with it, instead of escaping from it.

In attempting to theoretically explain the issue of rampant human rights violations committed by the State, I would like to use my understanding on Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “state of exception.” These mechanisms was/being used by the State – the Presidential Decree 1017, Executive Order 464, calibrated preemptive response, media censorship, militarization, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, etc., which produce a chilling effect – form an impression as if we are living under a revived martial law. Rather than describing a state as under a “martial law” or a “state of emergency”, Agamben prefers to use “state of exception” as a more politically correct term.

As members of a polity, the rights of its citizens are regulated by law as an instrument. The law giver is the Sovereign, who governs its constituents. The Sovereign has the right to define who should be banned from the polity – the lawbreakers or Homo sacer; and has the privilege to take away the rights of its people on certain conditions. There are two ways in which the Sovereign carries out its power: first, by actuality – i.e. actively exercising its power by reverting potentiality, by legislating Executive Order and Presidential Decree, for example; second, by potentiality – i.e. by remaining passive and not acting. In regard to the latter, the Sovereign suspends itself, steps outside, and abandons its people (I am not sure if this can be applied: potentiality by withdrawing the basic social services they need). Compounded by increasing poverty and social injustices, these marginalized sectors establish movements to voice their grievances. The more the Sovereign remains passive to these people, the greater their discontent. With this growing social unrest, the Sovereign later perceives this as a violent threat to its power, thereby declares the “state of exception” or “iustitium,” suspending the law to maximize it (without dictatorship according to Agamben) to preserve the power of the Sovereign. Thus, the Oplan Bantay Laya, a counterinsurgency campaign, is being put into operation against the Left (the perceived Homo sacer) in this country. Hence, the rampant extrajudicial killings, abductions, and arbitrary arrests.

How should we, citizens, break this “state of exception”? According to Benjamin, we need to bring about the real state of exception – i.e. by pure violence to depose the “law.” The constitution to come is the basis of this armed struggle. This is the “authentic act” for Zizek. We should break with the logic of perversion and cut off our reliance from the big Other, the Sovereign.