Trial of the century? Decade? How to tag Sara Duterte’s political spectacle.

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It's a framing device that the press loves to use to describe high-profile court cases. How many 'trials of the century' have we had anyway?

As the trial of Vice President Sara Duterte unfolds, media have looked for increasingly weighty language to articulate the importance of the proceedings.

It’s a “high-stakes affair,” a “long-awaited” trial, a “defining political test of her career.”

For some, it is simpler to call it the “trial of the century.”

Is it?

It’s not difficult for the media to brand the Senate spectacle as such. After all, one legitimate talking head is all you need for the descriptor to reverberate.

Private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan, even before she formally took on the role, tagged as the “trial of the century” Duterte’s impeachment process when she was first impeached in 2025.

Before the trial began on July 6, some reporters covering her even made a subtle attempt to remind Kapunan of that catch phrase. She repeated it, giving the media at least one prosecutor to quote.

The phrase is easy to digest — it is a framing language that the press can use no matter how historically imprecise it may be.

In the US, referring to high-profile court cases as the “trial of the century” can be “a traditional bit of American hyperbole,” writes Washington Post staff writer Peter Carlson. His 1999 article — humorously titled “(The Last) Trial of the Century!” — poked fun at the fact that media, every few years, had a new “trial of the century” — from the case of OJ Simpson, Microsoft, or then-US president Bill Clinton.

The phrase is listed in Encyclopedia Britannica Online to refer to spectacles that include a “driven prosecutor, an impassioned defense attorney, and an accused whose fate hangs in the balance.”

The impeachment trial of Duterte meets all three: the prosecution and defense teams are both out for blood, and Duterte — even though she is technically a respondent and not an accused — faces the possibility of immediate removal and perpetual disqualification from office should she get convicted by the impeachment court.

The court case of Duterte, of course, is not the first media-labeled “trial of the century” of the 21st century in the Philippines.

In fact, maybe the stakes were higher in 2001, when the court tried then-president Joseph Estrada. A Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism piece at the time said: “There was hope that the so-called ‘Trial of the Century’ would finally put an end to the cycle of impunity of those in public office.”

Estrada’s subsequent plunder trial, the 2012 impeachment trial of former chief justice Renato Corona that led to his conviction, and even the years-long Ampatuan massacre trial could all plausibly lay claim to the title.

Believing that Estrada’s impeachment trial of 2021 was more significant than the Vice President’s trial today, I admittedly labeled the latter as “trial of the decade” during a Rappler Talk interview with prosecution spokesman Zia Alonto Adiong.

But then, my co-reporter Jairo Bolledo, who is covering Sara Duterte’s defense team and who is also Rappler’s resident justice reporter, told me: “But there’s the trial of Rodrigo Duterte at The Hague later this year.”

I said in jest: “So I couldn’t even call his daughter’s trial the trial of 2026?!”

Just on Thursday, July 16, House Deputy Speaker Paolo Ortega even quipped: “We are already here in the impeachment trial, the trial of the century. But Congressman Joel Chua said, maybe (just) trial of the year.”

Whatever the media calls it, the search for a descriptor underscores the media’s effort to convey why the trial matters.

I’ve been reading former Senate president Franklin Drilon’s memoir ahead of his Rappler+ event this coming Friday, July 17. He puts it best: an impeachment trial is “a reminder that democracy is not a spectator sport.”

“It requires ordinary citizens, whether they wear the robes of judges or simply carry the weight of their conscience, to stand up and be counted when history calls.”

We in the media just want the public to tune in, be invested every step of the way, and not drop the ball. – Rappler.com