Analysis of development news research up to the present reveals that the field has not progressed from studying development messages' effects to a broader outlook on media and the structures in which they operate. For this reason, the present study has strived to account for how the political and socio-economic context of Philippine society influences the operation of a governmental journalism policy. This study set out to do two things. Firstly, it aimed to clarify the widespread idea that the use of communication for development purposes is not unlimited. Information dissemination - the objective of development news - is not the sole solution to development problems. Hence, the study of development news cannot be confined to correlating the amount of development content in the mass media with the level of development achieved within a certain period as most previous development news studies have done. This study aims to show that such correlations are futile unless seen within the context of the political economy of the media. News, especially in the press, is governed by policies that are influenced by the socio-political situation of the society in which it is produced. Secondly, by focusing the analysis on the socioeconomic and political context in which news restrictions under Aquino emerged, the study can point out parallelisms between Marcos' and Aquino's news policy. The study of communication and development, in particular, development news can then move from the linear model of communication to the political economy model. As a first step, the author examines the early theories on communication and development in order to present an overview of the underlying principles in many development communication programmes. Chapter two discusses cases or illustrations of the application of the theories of media and development. The chapter also points out the shortfall of these projects which the author attributes to seeing information dissemination as the solution to development problems. Chapter three then deals with the concept of development journalism, and the misunderstanding surrounding the concept. In this chapter, the author points out that the emphasis placed on content analysis has led to the failure to see development news as a policy arising from the immediate socio-political context of society in which media operate. Chapter four looks at the case of the Philippines under Marcos and how developmental journalism was the policy that oriented the practice of journalism during this period. The last chapter then looks at the Philippine press under Aquino and strives to assess the use of the same policy of governmental journalism. The study strives to achieve this through the use of qualitative analysis of news coverage of issues surrounding the insurgency, the land reform and the US military bases, combined with contextualisation of the content analysed.