Rodrigo Duterte, president-elect of the Philippines, argued Tuesday that journalists are not necessarily "exempted from assassination."

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," said Duterte, previously the longtime, tough-on-crime mayor of Davao City. Duterte's comments were in reaction to the death of a journalist in Manilla last week.

Duterte will be sworn in as Filipino president later this month, after a landslide victory in May.

The Philippines transitioned away from authoritarianism in the 1980s after the administration of Ferdinand Marcos.

It is considered still one of the most hostile environments in the world for journalists, however, with 176 journalists killed since Marcos. Duterte appeared to partially endorse those killings Tuesday, or at least believe that the slain partially brought their fates upon themselves.

"Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won't be killed if you don't do anything wrong," Duterte said.

"[Duterte has] in effect, declared open season to silence the media, both individual journalists and the institution, on the mere perception of corruption," the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said in a statement.

Duterte has long been a magnet for controversy, but his profile has been internationally amplified in the wake of his coming ascension to the presidency.

As mayor of Davao City, he took the crime-plagued Filipino city from one of the most dangerous in the world to one of the safest, according to assessment agencies. Duterte achieved this through a variety of tough-on-crime measures that many disapprove of, however. Duterte has been accused of links to the Davao Death Squad, responsible for over a thousand extrajudicial killings since the 1990s.

Duterte now appears poised to take his policies national, raising international concern.

"It is going to be bloody," he told a business group while campaigning in April. "I will use the military and the police to go out and arrest [criminals], hunt for them. And if they will offer a violent resistance, and thereby placing the lives of the law enforcers and the military whom I would task for a job to do, I will simply say, 'Kill them all and end the problem.'"