NUJP rejects call to boycott Duterte briefings

Incoming President Rodrigo Duterte presides over a press conference. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – A media organization has clarified that it was not the group that first issued the call to boycott President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s press conferences in the wake of his pronouncement that some journalists were slain because they were corrupt.

In a statement issued Sunday, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said it was the international group Reporters Without Borders who urged the country’s members of the press not to attend Duterte’s media briefings.

“For the record, it was the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontiers or RSF) that issued the call, one that was, rightly, not heeded by the Philippine media,” said NUJP president Ryan Rosauro.

In fact, Rosauro said, “the NUJP and other media organizations clearly said that to boycott the President-elect would be to abdicate our duties and responsibilities to inform the Filipino people.”

“Hence, the incoming president will have to bear our persistence in chronicling the twists and turns of his presidency,” he added.

NUJP is one of the organizations that condemned Duterte for saying corruption was the reason why some members of the media were killed.  SFM