The government task force on media security on Friday said the US State Department report that killings and attacks against journalists in the Philippines have “a chilling effect” is just “a work of fiction.”

In a statement, Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) executive director Undersecretary Paul Gutierrez refuted that the country’s freedom of expression was subject to “serious restrictions.”

“This so-called ‘chilling effect’ is a work of fiction by certain quarters who have the habit of always seeing the glass half-empty and not half-full,” Gutierrez said.

According to the US State Department 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, journalists in the Philippines were still harassed, threatened with violence, and physically attacked.

These attacks, it claimed, were directed against their reporting by powerful private individuals, government agencies, and individual politicians.

“Media generally remained free, active, and able to voice criticism of the government, despite the chilling effect caused by killings of and attacks on journalists, red-tagging, and political and nongovernmental pressure,” the report wrote.

The report also cited the continuing push of online news website Rappler and broadcaster ABS-CBN amid legal challenges.

“The online news website Rappler and broadcaster ABS-CBN continued to fight, with some success, legal challenges arising from allegedly spurious charges levied during the Duterte administration,” it said.

PTFoMS, for its part, said the three incidents of media violence included in the recent US State Department’s report were “all deemed ‘solved’ with the identification, arrest, and filing of cases against the suspects.”