Philippines’ ABS-CBN shutdown: TV network ‘did not attack Duterte’, Lopez matriarch says
- Conchita Lopez Taylor, matriarch of the Lopez family who owns the company, saw ABS-CBN’s first shutdown in 1972, when Ferdinand Marcos seized its facilities
- As its channels are switched off again, Taylor says the reason isn’t as clear this time, with politicians also volleying blame over the event
“We’re used to it,” she said in a phone interview from her home in California.
“We” referred to the large Lopez clan who owns the company, which had been forced to shut once before.
Taylor was a 42-year-old mother of seven when ABS-CBN’s facilities were seized in 1972 by the clan’s former political ally, then-President Ferdinand Marcos. Her husband, former ABS-CBN chairman Eugenio Lopez, Jnr, was also arrested and detained.
What Marcos did was understandable in hindsight, she said. Relations had broken down between Marcos and his vice-presidential mate, Fernando Lopez, brother of Eugenio, Snr.
The Lopez brothers, who co-founded ABS-CBN Corporation and the Manila Chronicle newspaper, were using their two media outlets to expose Marcos’ corruption.