Philippines Lawmaker Wants Country’s Sexy Tabloids Labeled Porn

Over the past several years, the Philippines has seen a proliferation of tabloid newspapers featuring nude photos—similar in some respects to the British tabloids such as The Daily Star that have traditionally included nude or semi-nude photos of “Page 3 girls.” But now, one lawmaker in the Philippines says that the raunchy tabloids need to be classified as “adult material,” and regulated no differently than porn, according to a report by the Philippine political site Politiko. “Smutty tabloids should be regulated in such manner as to keep them at bay to protect the moral integrity of our children,” said Quezon City Representative Precious Hipolito Castelo, the lawmaker behind the country’s House bill 4773, which would reclassify any “tabloid containing sexual stories and images as pornographic or X-rated, denominating them as only for adults.” In fact, Castelo has called for all porn to be regulated. Even though porn is already illegal in the country, the Philippines with a population of about 105 million consumes the 10th-largest quantity of porn in the world, according to a report by The Asean Post. The most recent statistics available show that in 2006, supposedly illegal porn was a $1 billion industry in the Philippines as far back as 2006. But Castelo now wants to add the new array of risque tabloids to the porn ban, citing “rising rates of teenage pregnancy, coupled with alarming increase in HIV infections,” according to the Philippines news site GMA News Online. She cited no evidence, however, connecting teen pregnancy or HIV rates to porn. But the tabloid-porn bill has already received criticism as the first step on the road to government control of the media.  “HB 4733 could set the stage for media censorship without using the latter term,” University of the Philippines-Diliman Professor Danilo Arao warned, as quoted by Politiko. He also noted that the bill defines “sexual stories” in such vague terms that “even misogynist pronouncements of certain government officials,” could be branded porn. Photo by Presidential Communications Operations Office / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain