Truth Telling and other Perils in “Democratic” Philippines 223 But even under these circumstances, and in response to them, a corps of dissident practitioners has developed. These practitioners see the limitations of their own coverage; they test the political, economic and ideological limits underpinned by the ownership system on a daily basis; and they desire a truly relevant journalism that owes its allegiance rst and last to the people and a responsibility to impart accurate and balanced information. This was especially evident during the political crisis in 2001, when the dissidents resisted pressures by editors and owners to shape their coverage in favor of Estrada, as well as against efforts to buy them off, and in the latter years of the Arroyo watch, when despite the killings, threats and harassments, journalists continued to report and comment on government wrongdoing. These professionals are scattered throughout the Philippine mass media, and included reporters, columnists and even editors. They are the reason why, despite the political economy of the Philippine press, critical articles and news vital to the public understanding of recent events still manage to be published, even in those newspapers whose policies, ideological inclinations and political acquiescence to those in power make them virtual government mouthpieces. What is clear is that for all its problems, there are individual practitioners in the Philippine media, even in the most timid and most acquiescent of Philippine newspapers, who succeed in reporting the news accurately. For them the task of gathering information and reporting is a day-to-day struggle with editors and even with owners, an ongoing conict that is extremely complex, characterized by small victories, narrow escapes and many defeats. The new media The Internet has played an important part in the more recent political crises in the Philippines. While traditional media still dominate coverage, in particular print, radio, and television, other supplementary forms of media are emerging. If SMS texting was a contributing factor to the propaganda of both sides during the impeachment of President Joseph Estrada, e-mail and online journals (or blogs) took on a much more prominent role during the nine-years in which Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was in power. The new media also assumed a bigger role in the elections of 2010 and 2016. The political crisis in 2000 – 2001 provoked the creation of a number of political, almost uniformly anti-Estrada, websites. Over twenty such websites, characterized by a high degree of interactivity, were identied by Ederic Eder in the CMFR's Philippine Journalism Review in December 2000 ( Eder 2000:3133). In the 2005-2006 political crisis, blogging played a signicant part in providing the public with uncensored information they could not get from the mainstream media. The PCIJ blog, for example, was the rst to break the story on the existence of the recording of a conversation between the President and then Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, allegedly proving that Garcillano had helped manipulate the 2004 general election results.