The American press duly notes Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s barbarous crackdown on alleged drug dealers, addicts and enablers — perhaps 5,800 summary executions by both his cops and vigilantes since early summer.

And it’s far worse than most media report.

Outlets of very different sensibilities — Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera — now take audiences far deeper into this horror. They include looks at the killers, the self-justifying police and the substantial public support for what’s playing out.

For starters, Filipina journalist Ana Santos profiles Ronald dela Rosa, director general of the Philippine National Police (PNP), who is Duterte’s chief executioner and, yes, “treated more like a rock star than a policeman.” (Foreign Policy)

“Women sometimes scream or cry tears of joy when they see him; crowds flock to him in public, forcing his own men to huddle around him to protect him from adoring hands. A trail of fans follows him around the country.”

Sure, worldwide outrage is inspired by photos of bodies whose faces are wrapped in packaging tape like mummies and adorned with cardboard signs labeling them “pushers” or “drug dealers.”

But Santos details how dela Rosa, known as “Bato,” or The Rock, is “seen as a hero.”

Then, even more telling, we have this: an 18-minute Al Jazeera story that ran on AJ+, the network’s online news and current events channel. It puts to shame most of what you’ve likely seen on American television, if you’ve seen anything at all, since network foreign reporting these days is largely relegated to fleeting mention of “The Battle for Aleppo.”

It’s the nervy work of reporter Jason Motlagh, a reporting fellow at the Washington-based Pulitzer Center. As Tom Hundley, a Pulitzer official and former stellar Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent, puts it to me, Motlagh and Santos “offer a jarring look inside the state-sanctioned killing spree.”

Most of all, there’s a seemingly sweet young woman who, we learn, is part of a husband-wife hit squad. She goes on camera (her face largely hidden) to explain to Motlagh how and why she kills for $150 per hit ($400 for a big-time pusher) — and does so at the behest of a “senior police officer” who’s protecting his own drug business. Her husband does the driving, she pulls the trigger.

They also assassinate some who have surrendered voluntarily, she says, since they might leak that same senior officer’s name. “The problem is if my boss is named, those who are above him might also be named.”

Does she feel even a smidgen of remorse? “Those we kill are not good people, are not regular people, they are the wicked ones…We are just cleaning the trash, and they are the trash. They should be erased from the world.”

Is she for real? On Sunday I tracked down Motlagh, who’s 35 and lives in Oakland, California and was determined to tell “a dark, deeply personal” tale that would stand apart from much previous coverage.

He followed photographers to one murder and tracked down the victim’s relatives’ effort to raise money for the wake. Along the way, his fixer (herself a veteran journalist) arranged the one-hour interview.

“At one point she recounted how she seduced and killed a drunk target with a knife stab to the neck,” Motlagh said. “It’s hard to believe someone as soft-spoken and slight could be capable of such cool violence, but her words rang true.”

Motlagh’s sense is that “she wanted there to be some record of her exploits because she herself fears for her life. Having killed so many people on behalf of a corrupt senior police officer, it follows that she could be eliminated for her knowledge in this climate of impunity. She has killed many others for precisely this reason.”