It’s been a year since the ABS-CBN leadership decided to sign off. This was probably it’s only power move throughout the four years that Duterte had vilified them every chance he got, even when he had Gina Lopez as DENR Secretary, and even when ABS had paid up whatever it owed in taxes, and returned the cash the President insisted they owed him for an advertisement that didn’t air during the 2016 presidential campaign. And yes, this was an important power move, considering that all of us were witness to how its main commentators tried their hardest to bite their tongues on live free radio, and how news coverage was less about delivering the news as it was also about making sure not to step on too many toes.

To be fair, this wasn’t just the state of ABS-CBN news and public affairs under Duterte, as it is the state of mainstream media that has the widest coverage across social classes. In a country where a majority are not reading anything written in English, and a majority of those online are on free data, it should be pretty clear by now that for all the hashtags we can get to trend, and all the “unities” we think we’re doing here, we are in an echo chamber like no other. And no, we’re not winning anything in these echo chambers.

Just like we couldn’t win the battle to keep ABS-CBN on air.

It was many things of course, other than our complete and utter denial, a refusal really, to talk about the propaganda war. One that we have all been part of since 2016, whether we like it or not; one that has outplayed us since maybe, 2017, when the line drawn on human rights violations and killings started growing the people on this side of the anti-Duterte fence.

But being clear about what we stand against, even when we are on the side of justice and rights, is not enough anymore. Not at a time when right and wrong are skewed against is, not at a time when government officials and the President himself lie through their teeth, not when we have a whole State propaganda machinery going against us. Telling the truth just doesn’t cut it, when you have a whole alternate universe built on a different set of truths. We know this to be true in relation to human rights, which Duterte has successfully skewed to mean that only non-criminals have rights, and every suspect he points a finger at is a criminal.

We know this to be true in relation to ABS-CBN. From the get-go, it was clear that this was petty Presidential vendetta. There are enough direct quotes from Duterte himself, talking about his beef (and that is really all it is) against the Lopezes. But calling out the President’s pettiness is not enough anymore, not at a time when he can decide how big and how small anything is: lest we forget, he thinks that the pandemic is “maliit na bagay sa ating buhay,” and that our win over China with regards the West Philippine Sea is “just a piece of paper.”

Neither of these are true, but when Duterte says it, and he matches those words with (in)action, you know what it fuels is the propaganda machinery that has built its own alternative Philippines, where they have their own “facts,” “truths,” and fictions.

And all those things lost us ABS-CBN. Which is ironic considering that ABS-CBN should’ve had enough muscle to plow its way through a massive campaign to stay on air. After all, as far as a propaganda machinery goes, it was nationwide, had resources at its disposal, and whole teams of creatives and news and public affairs commentators to boot. But it had no bite from the get-go—or did it choose not to bite?

Instead of going to town about press freedom and democracy, instead of doing a real massive campaign against government clamping down on our freedoms, which would mean actually doing a massive information campaign on all the terrible things this government has been doing, the ones that don’t make the news, or the ones that get drowned out by the noise of government-controlled propaganda, what ABS-CBN focused on was the narrative of job loss. And yes, that is a major thing, but if anyone stopped to think at all, one would have known that this narrative of 11,000 people losing jobs will not matter to a President who ordering people killed. Neither will it matter to a puppet-Congress that Duterte holds by the neck.

Now a massive propaganda campaign from ABS-CBN itself, a blanket order to all local, regional, and global channels, to turn up the heat on the issues that matter, tell the stories that they know government would rather not have in the mainstream, complete with commentators now given the freedom to speak as they will about the state of the nation and governance—that might have been the kind of hardball they needed to play in order for the outcomes to change. Because that would’ve hit even these Congress Reps where it hurts the most: public perception and the electorate. Sure the outcomes might be the same, but imagine all the content ABS-CBN would’ve generated before it went down, imagine all the information we would’ve had, the kind of information we can continue to use towards winning 2022.

Imagine how different things would be if media were not only free, but if its corporate backers were braver and more courageous. Imagine how different things would be if corporations and businesses stood with the people, at a time when it is already clear that all of us are affected by this state of governance. And if you’re not one to imagine things, then go back to history: we did civil disobedience like no other in 1986. And it saw us all uniting against tyranny and dictatorship, corruption and cronyism, in ways that paralyzed the incompetent violent governance. 

But for us to be able to do that at this point in time, we need to work from the same information about the real state of the nation. We need to have a better sense of how Duterte propaganda works, how large it is, and how all of it is online and on ground. If there’s anything we must learn from the ABS-CBN closure, it’s that we need to care enough to build on  strategies of response and containment, and we need to use all the resources at our disposal towards the goal of taking back our democracy from the clutches of this kind of leadership.

The legal routes and Congress inquiries are not enough—to some extent this seemed like ABS-CBN was going down without a fight. It had all the guns and ammunition, but with no plan or vision, it decided not to use it. It’s a wasted opportunity at raising people’s consciousness about the state of the nation under Duterte, a wasted chance at raising a fist at the worst governance we have seen in this country’s history.

The task now is to learn from that mistake and start thinking in terms of this propaganda war. Because there’s no winning 2022 without winning this war. And there’s no winning this war, if we deny it exists. And no: denying it exists doesn’t make it go away. It only means we’re losing the election as we speak.

We have 365 days to go to 2022. ***