Sheila Coronel

Sheila Coronel by Autumn Golden

Sheila Coronel is an investigative journalist who started her work in her home country of the Philippines. Coronel focuses on politics and has been specializing in human rights in police corruption in some of her recent articles. During her career as an investigative journalist, she won the 2003 Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts. SInce 2006, Coronel has been a professor of investigative journalism and even promoted to dean of academic affairs at Columbia University in New York. 

https://journalism.columbia.edu/faculty/sheila-coronel

This Is How Democracy Dies

In this article, Coronel describes how she is watching democracy die in the Philippines with the judge sentenced a reporter and an author to jail for an article and a crime that “didn't exist” at the time of publishing the article. She compares this to when dictator Ferdinand Marcos sent hundred of journalists, reporters, and politicians to jail in 1972 and shut down most news outlets at the same time. By withholding information to the public and/or penalizing journalists for sharing this information, democracy is falling from citizen's grasp. 

Commentary: Still reeling from Duterte’s war on drugs, Manila’s poor hit hardest by COVID-19

Here, Coronel comments on how Duerete instructed officers to kill thousands of “suspected drug users and sellers” in order to combat drugs in Manila. This massacre on day one of his rule showed how little he cared for people and trying to get them the help they need to recover from the illness that is addiction. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the same is seen. Duerete does not seek to help those in need who get left behind and have no choice but to turn to “criminal” activity to try and sustain themselves and their families.

Opinion: A warning from the Philippines on how a demagogue can haunt politics for decades

In this article, Coronel begins by describing celebrations people had in America when Joe Biden was elected as the president in 2020. In her home country of the Philippines, celebrating is not as easy to come by. There, voting does not solve issues the way it appears to in the United States. In the ’70s, Ferdinand Marcos claimed himself as president and even held an inauguration to “solidify” it. He had the military on his side which allowed for this to take place. Over time as riots and protesting persisted, the citizens eventually ran him and his family out of the presidential palace which led them to flee to Hawaii. The current leader of the Philippines is a fan of Marcos and has shown signs of following in his footsteps of authoritarian rule with the way his campaign was funded by the Marcos family, and many of the family members holding positions in the government.