DESPITE the blame the Duterte administration has heaped on media, President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday urged journalists to criticize him if he is doing something wrong in his job because it is their duty to the public.
“Do not hesitate to attack me, criticize me, if I do wrong in my job,” Duterte told reporters, after being asked if he is angry at journalists for reports that caused tension between him and some foreign leaders.
“I am not at liberty to be angry at anybody. It is your sworn duty to ask questions. It is also my obligation to my people for the money spent in this trip and for all the things that cost the Filipino, I have to make an official report. Wala akong galit sa inyo,” he said.
“Every time you press that button in your camera, you record history of this country and that’s why you’re important,” Duterte said.
The pronouncement was a radical shift from his stance against the media since he was elected president.
In June, then President-elect Duterte said he would boycott the media and decline to hold press conferences after the global media group Reporters Without Borders urged local journalists to boycott him until he apologizes for saying that some journalists deserved to be killed because they were corrupt.
But the President lifted his boycott on August 1 after inducting government appointees in Malacañang Palace.
While in Jakarta Friday, Duterte blamed the media for “spinning” his remarks when he called US President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” before leaving the Philippines.
“I never made statement … it’s just a media spin. I never confronted Obama—I don’t know him—before taking off from Davao,” Duterte told hundreds of Filipinos at the Indonesian capital.
He claimed that media mistranslated “p****g ina” to mean “son of a whore” when it actually means “son of a b*tch” or “son of a gun” or “f*ck you.”
“A whore is [a] very terrible thing to hear,” Duterte said. “I was talking all along in the dialect.”
But he also said he understands that people commit mistakes, some with malice and some without.
If the mistake “is just a mere shortfall of talent, let it slide. I would like to presume that you did it without malice,” he said, adding that he would appreciate an apology for a shortcoming in reporting.
He also added that it is not his problem if “the other side,” the international media, has interpreted his statement in a wrong way stressing that he is only answerable to the Filipino people.
“If the other side, interpreted it in a way they wanted it, that’s their problem. After all, I am not a player of the international community. I only answer to the Filipino people,” he said.
While he is not mad at the media, Duterte also took a dig at opinion writers are “living a low life.”
“I’m sure that if you’re a Filipino, you’d be proud of me. Well, of course, for the low lifes in the press, some of the columnists, nothing is really too-good-to-be-true. I’ll leave you with that problem,” Duterte said.