DURING the past weeks, at least seven members of the media have been the targets of trolls, or what appeared as “keyboard warriors,” of the Duterte administration, prompting some media groups and organizations here and abroad to raise the alarm.

As they are, these comments against the journalists and a broadcaster, in the form of messages over the Internet, were “very nasty” to the point that such could be seen or interpreted as threats. Count the journalists out, and there are more other victims.

Indeed, another battle has been drawn by the hordes of Duterte followers in cyberspace, and they are waging it out in a borderless front, and like the war on illegal drugs that was being pursued by the government, which is brutal, it was also vicious.

It was a high-tech war, waged in the cyberspace against those who do not toe the line of the administration.

Journalists case

Last month Reuters reporters Manny Mogato and Karen Lema were on the receiving end of the vicious messages and even threats by die-hard Duterte supporters, after they reported on the “Hitler” remarks of the President like other journalists.

Media groups and organizations were forced to issue statements in defense of the two beleaguered journalists.

“Threatening journalists when their reportage is disagreeable or erroneous is criminal, as is helping spread these threats, especially if any harm should befall the subjects of such opprobrium,” the local National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said in a news statement.

“We are worried over the continued vilification of media and attempts to lay the predicate to muzzle freedom of the press and of expression,” it added.

Not too long ago, another reporter was also attacked through the social media, after she asked the President about the incident wherein he whistled at one television reporter.

In September two other journalists were also attacked following an international story on Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs.

Just this week a broadcaster for radio station dzXL was, likewise, threatened over her critical reporting of the President.

Palace backing

The President’s “soldiers” over the Internet, who uses every available platform of social media, seemed to be very well organized that they would come in chorus for trolls the minute any message that do not sit well with the administration is put up.

And it appeared that Malacañang endorses this practice of Duterte followers when it told journalists in Manila to follow the examples of their colleagues from Davao, as reported by the NUJP.

The Palace suggested that “media should undergo a briefing from Davao-based media to be able tell if the President is making fun of an issue or if he’s serious.”

“The suggestion is egregious,” the NUJP said in response.

“What Malacañang is basically saying is that the President is so incapable of coherence that he requires divination by an exclusive clique that enjoys a level of kinship anathema to a profession that demands a modicum of distance from its subjects,” the NUJP said.

“It is the obligation of the government and of leaders to speak clearly that the governed may understand, unequivocally, the messages and edicts they wish to impart,” it added.