WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has offered a muted and belated expression of “concern” over the convictions of two Philippine journalists on criminal libel charges.
A one-sentence State Department statement titled “On Press Freedom in the Philippines” and released on Tuesday nearly 48 hours after a Manila court pronounced the convictions may raise new questions about the U.S.
commitment to supporting press freedom abroad. In the statement, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called for the Philippines to resolve the case but pointedly did not take issue with the legal process or the guilty verdicts rendered against award-winning journalist Maria Ressa and her former colleague Reynaldo Santos Jr.