The Office of the President is responsible for managing the government’s policy toward the press, but freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

 and freedom of the press

Freedom of the press

Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...

 are enshrined in the 1987 constitution. Although independent observers credit the government with respecting freedom of the press in general, the government has been criticized for failing to investigate thoroughly summary killings of journalists and for subjecting journalists to harassment and surveillance. The most widely read newspapers are the Manila Bulletin

Manila Bulletin

The Manila Bulletin , is the Philippines' largest broadsheet newspaper by circulation, followed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It bills itself as "The Nation's Leading Newspaper", which is its official slogan...

, The Philippine Star

The Philippine Star

The Philippine Star is a daily English-language broadsheet newspaper based in Manila and circulated nationwide in the Philippines. Owned and published by PhilSTAR Daily, Inc, it was founded on July 28, 1986 by veteran journalists Max Soliven, Betty Go-Belmonte and Art Borjal...

, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Philippine Daily Inquirer

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, popularly known as the Inquirer, is the most widely read broadsheet newspaper in the Philippines, with a daily circulation of 260,000 copies. It is one of the Philippines' newspapers of record...

, The Manila Times, and BusinessWorld

BusinessWorld

BusinessWorld is a business newspaper in the Philippines. Its forerunner, BusinessDay, whose maiden issue came out on February 27,1967, was Southeast Asia’s first business daily. As of September 2011, it has a daily circulation of 65,000....

.

Growth

In 2004 the country had 225 television stations, 369 AM radio broadcast stations, 583 FM radio broadcast stations, 10 internet radio stations and 5 shortwave

Shortwave

Shortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...

stations. Although some media outlets, such as IBC

Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation

Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation is a Philippine VHF television network of the Government Communications Group headed by the Press Secretary. Its studios are located at Broadcast City, Old Balara, Capitol Hills, Diliman, Quezon City and its transmitter is located at the Coca Cola plant,...

 (television) and the Philippine Broadcasting Service (radio), are government-run, most outlets are privately owned. Much media ownership is concentrated in the hands of prominent families and businesses. Consequently, some reports tend to be one-sided presentations favoring special interests. The privately owned press also tends toward sensationalism at times.

See also

• List of newspapers in the Philippines
• List of radio stations in the Philippines
• List of television stations in the Philippines
• Philippine cinema
• Philippine television