Trust in news in the Philippines plummeted by 10 points in 2026, the steepest decline among all 48 markets covered by this year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report, amid deep political divisions, sustained attacks on the media and a continued shift toward social media, video platforms, creators and AI tools.

What Tulfo’s trenchant criticism failed to mention is that certain members of the government’s armed personnel are not only violent when they are performing their duty—they are as violent off of it and in dealing with hapless civilians. Sandatahang Dahas’s March 2026 data offer proof to these circumstances and to the alarming number of attacks against state agents outside of official operations.

About 96% of Filipino children aged 12 to 17 are online while at least two million children experienced online sexual abuse or exploitation in 2021 alone, according to a Rainbows in the Dark study, citing international data from End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism.

As this is Sandatahang Dahas’s first annual report using its own method of tracking and counting state-related violence in the Philippines, it cannot yet conclude on year-on-year trends or to say with certainty that this year was more or less violent than the last. It has limited its discussion to the recognizable nexus of state violence, to the circumstances that often give rise to assaults and who resists them, and to the bodies found in the familiar geography of an unending insurgency.Monitoring of incidents in the first months of this year, however, indicates that 2026 may just be as deadly to insurgents, civilians, and state agents alike. Or even be much worse.